Vindication of Natural Society Hogeye Condensed Version
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  • Democracy is unstable, and shifts into despotism and aristocracy. With democracy, you get "every Species of Government ... in the worst Form."








  • Later democracies basically follow the Athenian model:

    "You find the same Confusion, the same Factions, the same Tumults, the same Revolutions, and in fine, the same Slavery."



The whole History of this celebrated Republick is but one Tissue of Rashness, Folly, Ingratitude, Injustice, Tumult, Violence, and Tyranny, and indeed of every Species of Wickedness that can well be imagined. This was a City of Wisemen, in which a Minister could not exercise his Functions; a warlike People amongst whom a General did not dare either to gain or lose a Battle; a learned Nation, in which a Philosopher could not venture on a free Enquiry. This was the City which banished Themistocles, starved Aristides, forced into Exile Miltiades, drove out Anaxagoras, and poisoned Socrates. This was a City which changed the Form of its Government with the Moon; eternal Conspiracies, Revolutions daily, nothing fixed and established. A Republick, as an ancient Philosopher has observed, is no one Species of Government, but a Magazine of every Species; here you find every Sort of it, and that in the worst Form. As there is a perpetual Change, one rising and the other falling, you have all the Violence and wicked Policy, by which a beginning Power must always acquire its Strength, and all the Weakness by which falling States are brought to a complete Destruction.

Rome has a more venerable Aspect than Athens; and she conducted her Affairs, so far as related to the Ruin and Oppression of the greatest Part of the World, with greater Wisdom and more Uniformity. But the domestic Oeconomy of these two States was nearly or altogether the same. An internal Dissention constantly tore to Pieces the Bowels of the Roman Commonwealth. You find the same Confusion, the same Factions which subsisted at Athens, the same Tumults, the same Revolutions, and in fine, the same Slavery. If perhaps their former Condition did not deserve that Name altogether as well. All other Republicks were of the same Character. Florence was a Transcript of Athens. And the modern Republicks, as they approach more or less to the Democratick Form, partake more or less of the Nature of those which I have described.

ToAnarchPg Vindication of Natural Society