habituated to any considerable moderation at home. Those
who expect in a free state to see the people undaunted in war and
pusillanimous in peace, are certainly desirous of impossibilities; and
it may be advanced as a general rule that whenever a perfect calm is
visible, in a state that calls itself a republic, the spirit of
liberty no longer subsists.

Union, in a body politic, is a very equivocal term: true union is such
a harmony as makes all the particular parts, as opposite as they may
seem to us, concur to the general welfare of the society, in the same
manner as discords in music contribute to the general melody of sound.
Union may prevail in a state full of seeming commotions; or in other
words, there may be a harmony from whence results prosperity, which
alone is true peace; and may be considered in the same view as the
various parts of this universe, which are eternally connected by the
action of some and the reaction of others.

In a despotic state, indeed, which is every government where the power
is immoderately exerted, a real division is perpetually kindled. The
peasant, the soldier, the merchant, the magistrate, and the grandee,
have no other conjunction than what arises from the ability of the one
to oppress the other without resistance; and if at any time a union
happens to be introduced, citizens are not then united, but dead
bodies are laid in the grave contiguous to each other.

It must be acknowledged that the Roman laws were too weak to govern
the republic; but experience has proved it to be an invariable fact
that good laws, which raise the reputation and power of a small
republic, become incommodious to it when once its grandeur is
established, because it was their natural effect to make a great
people but not to govern them.

The difference is very considerable between good laws and those which
may be called convenient; between such laws as give a people dominion
over others, and such as continue them in the possession of power when
they have once acquired it.

There is at this time a republic in the world (the Canton of Berne),
of which few persons have any knowledge, and which, by plans
accomplished in silence and secrecy, is daily enlarging its power. And
certain it is that if it ever rises to that height of grandeur for
which it seems preordained by its wisdom, it must inevitably change
its laws; and the necessary innovations will not be effected by any
legislator, but must spring fro