as
their institutions happen to conform to those which his party
advocates. A Tory will abuse America and Americans, and praise the
Austrians. A Whig will, _perhaps_, abuse the Austrians and others who
live under paternal or despotic governments, and praise the
Americans, who live under institutions still more free than his own.
This has properly been considered by Locke as a species of madness
to which all mankind are more or less subject, and from which hardly
any individual can entirely free himself. 'There is', he says,
'scarce a man so free from it, but that if he should always, on all
occasions, argue or do as in some cases he constantly does, would not
be thought fitter for Bedlam than civil conversation. I do not here
mean when he is under the power of an unruly passion, but in the
steady, calm course of his life. That which thus captivates their
reason, and leads men of sincerity blindfold from common sense will,
when examined, be found to be what we are speaking of. Some
independent ideas, of no alliance to one another, are, by education,
custom, and the constant din of their party, so coupled in their
minds, that they always appear there together, and they can no more
separate them in their thoughts than if they were but one idea, and
they operate as if they really were so.' (Book II, Chap. 33.)

Perjury had long since ceased to be considered disgraceful, or even
discreditable, among the patrician order in Rome before the soldiers
ventured to break their oaths of allegiance. Military service had,
from the ignorance and selfishness of this order, been rendered
extremely odious to free-born Romans; and they frequently mutinied
and murdered their generals, though they would not desert, because
they had sworn not to do so. To break his oath by deserting the
standards of Rome was to incur the hatred and contempt of the great
mass of the people--the soldier dared not hazard this. But patricians
of senatorial and consular rank did not hesitate to violate their
oaths whenever it promised any advantage to the patrician order
collectively or individually, because it excited neither contempt nor
indignation in that order. 'They have been false to their generals,'
said Fabius, 'but they have never deceived the gods. I know they
_can_ conquer, and they shall swear to do so.' They swore, and
conquered.

Instead of adopting measures to make the duties of a soldier less
odious, the patricians tumed their hatred of these