Vindication of Natural Society Hogeye Condensed Version
page 19
  • All three forms of Artificial Society - despotism, aristocracy, and democracy - amount to nothing more than tyranny.














  • Even granting that there existed some societies that were free for some, for a time; these were slave societies where most people were not free.
















  • The vast majority of human beings were and are oppressed under States.
We are now at the Close of our Review of the three simple Forms of artificial Society, and we have shewn them, however they may differ in Name, or in some slight Circumstances, to be all alike in effect; in effect, to be all Tyrannies. But suppose we were inclined to make the most ample Concessions; let us concede Athens, Rome, Carthage, and two or three more of the ancient, and as many of the modern Commonwealths, to have been, or to be free and happy, and to owe their Freedom and Happiness to their political Constitution. Yet allowing all this, what Defence does this make for artificial Society in general, that these inconsiderable Spots of the Globe have for some short Space of Time stood as Exceptions to a Charge so general?

But when we call these Governments free, or concede that their Citizens were happier than those which lived under different Forms, it is merely ex abundanti. For we should be greatly mistaken, if we really thought that the Majority of the People which filled these Cities, enjoyed even that nominal political Freedom of which I have spoken so much already. In reality, they had no Part of it. In Athens there were usually from ten to thirty thousand Freemen: This was the utmost. But the Slaves usually amounted to four hundred thousand, and sometimes to a great many more. The Freemen of Sparta and Rome were not more numerous in proportion to those whom they held in a Slavery, even more terrible than the Athenian.

Therefore state the Matter fairly: The free States never formed, though they were taken all together, the thousandth Part of the habitable Globe; the Freemen in these States were never the twentieth Part of the People, and the Time they subsisted is scarce any thing in that immense Ocean of Duration in which Time and Slavery are so nearly commensurate. Therefore call these free States, or popular Governments, or what you please; when we consider the Majority of their Inhabitants, and regard the Natural Rights of Mankind, they must appear in Reality and Truth, no better than pitiful and oppressive Oligarchies.
ToAnarchPg Vindication of Natural Society