' But steeped in
corruption, vice, and venality, as the whole nation was, (and nobody
had done more than Caesar to corrupt it,) what could even Cicero, Cato,
Brutus, have done, had it been referred to them to establish a
good government for their country? They had no ideas of government
themselves, but of their degenerate Senate, nor the people of liberty,
but of the factious opposition of their tribunes. They had afterwards
their Tituses, their Trajans, and Antoninuses, who had the will to make
them happy, and the power to mould their government into a good and
permanent form. But it would seem as if they could not see their way
clearly to do it. No government can continue good, but under the control
of the people; and their people were so demoralized and depraved, as to
be incapable of exercising a wholesome control. Their reformation then
was to be taken up _ab incunabulis_. Their minds were to be informed by
education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of
virtue, and deterred from those of vice, by the dread of punishments,
proportioned indeed, but irremissible; in all cases, to follow truth
as the only safe guide, and to eschew error, which bewilders us in one
false consequence after another, in endless succession. These are
the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the
structure of order and good government. But this would have been an
operation of a generation or two, at least, within which period would
have succeeded many Neros and Commoduses, who would have quashed the
whole process.
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