from his high estate,' the victim of
informers, dying in prison or exile, or by the hand of the executioner.
The lesson which he thus receives, makes him cautious; he leaves
politics, represses his pride, and saves pence. Avarice is enthroned as
his bosom's lord, and assumes the style of the Great King; the rational
and spirited elements sit humbly on the ground at either side, the one
immersed in calculation, the other absorbed in the admiration of
wealth. The love of honour turns to love of money; the conversion
is instantaneous. The man is mean, saving, toiling, the slave of one
passion which is the master of the rest: Is he not the very image of the
State? He has had no education, or he would never have allowed the blind
god of riches to lead the dance within him. And being uneducated he will
have many slavish desires, some beggarly, some knavish, breeding in his
soul. If he is the trustee of an orphan, and has the power to defraud,
he will soon prove that he is not without the will, and that his
passions are only restrained by fear and not by reason. Hence he leads a
divided existence; in which the better desires mostly prevail. But when
he is contending for prizes and other distinctions, he is afraid to
incur a loss which is to be repaid only by barren honour; in time of
war he fights with a small part of his resources, and usually keeps his
money and loses the victory.

Next comes democracy and the democratic man, out of oligarchy and
the oligarchical man. Insatiable avarice is the ruling passion of an
oligarchy; and they encourage expensive habits in order that they may
gain by the ruin of extravagant youth. Thus men of family often lose
their property or rights of citizenship; but they remain in the city,
full of hatred against the new owners of their estates and ripe for
revolution. The usurer with stooping walk pretends not to see them;
he passes by, and leaves his sting--that is, his money--in some other
victim; and many a man has to pay the parent or principal sum multiplied
into a family of children, and is reduced into a state of dronage by
him. The only way of diminishing the evil is either to limit a man in
his use of his property, or to insist that he shall lend at his own
risk. But the ruling class do not want remedies; they care only for
money, and are as careless of virtue as the poorest of the citizens.
Now there are occasions on which the governors and the governed meet
together,--at festivals, o