what an abyss I plunge myself; but though prudence bids me con ceal my passion, honour overpowers its murmurs. I am the criminal; I first destroyed the golden calm of Julia's innocence; I lulled her heart with immeasurable hopes, and gave it up, like a betrayer, a prey to the wildest of passions. You will bid me remember my rank, my birth, the anger of my father.... But I love! My hopes become more fervent, as the breach becomes wider between nature and convenience, between my resolution and the prejudice of the world. Let me see, whether love or interest will longest keep the field? [Augusta has now thrown herself upon the sofa, and covers her face with both her hands.-Casimir approaches her, and says in a gentle voice,] Have you aught to answer, Lady? • AUGUSTA. [In a tone of the most absolute dejection.] Nothing..... Nothing..... but that you destroy yourself and me..... and with us yet a third. • A third? • CASIMIR. • AUGUSTA. • Never can you marry Julia; never can you be happy with me. We shall be all your father's victims. I must not hope to possess the heart of an husband, whom force alone compelled to give me his hand.' Our readers are already acquainted with the outlines of the play. See the reference at the beginning of this article. ART. VI. The History of Greece. By William Mitford, Esq. Vol. III *. 4to. pp. 539. 11. 1s. Boards. Cadell jun. and Davies. TH HIS volume contains an account of several important events in the history of Greece;-the state of Athens, from the establishment of the supreme council of thirty, commonly called the Thirty Tyrants, to the restoration of the democracy by Thrasibulus; the general confederacy against Lacedæmon, to the peace of Antalcidas, which re-established the Lacedæmonian power in Greece; the elevation of Thebes by the battle of Leuctra, and the dissolution of the antient system of Grecian confederacy, in consequence of the battle of Mantinæa. It includes the interesting episode, which Xenophon has so beautifully written, of the march of Cyrus to Babylon, and the return of the Greeks. The author has also inserted an account of the civil history of Athens between the ages of Pericles and Demosthenes; with a summary view of the rise of philosophy and history in Greece. The contents of this volume, For the first vol. see Rev. vol. lxxiii. P. 81. For the second, see Rev, N. S. vol. iii. p. 284. and p. 382. therefore, therefore, are particularly important; since they shew the increase of the connection of the affairs of Greece with those of Persia, which first began in the latter years of the Peloponnesian war. Mr. Mitford introduces the volume by what he calls a recapitulatory synopsis of the Peloponnesian war, with some reference to the momentous events of the present day; and he concludes it with the following observations: • Able in war, skilful, perhaps to the utmost extent of human ability, in political intrigue and political negociation, in leading fellowcitizens, in bargaining with strangers, the Greeks were unfortunately deficient in the more important science of framing that great machine which we call a government; harmonizing the various ranks of men of which a nation must consist; providing at the same time, security for property, and equal justice for those who have no property; establishing, for the well-disposed of every rank, an interest in the preservation of the constitution, and, for the unprincipled and turbulent, strong coercion to secure it against disturbe ance; reconciling the protection of private rights with the maintenance of public force, and making a general private interest in the support of the existing order of things the basis of patriotism, and the source of general concord and public spirit. In the preceding chapters we have traced the rise and downfall of the most celebrated democracy that has appeared in the world: we have seen the wonderful force of that form of government as a spring, which enabled so small a community to become such a formidable power, to acquire such extensive dominion, and to exhibit, within so short a period, so many exalted characters. But we have seen too its utter unfitness both to give security under equal law to its own people, and to rest in peace among neighbouring states; its disposition to exercise the most oppressive tyranny against the most illustrious of its own citizens, and the most imperious and cruel despotism over those who were so unfortunate as to fall under its sovereignty in the condition of subjects; and we have seen that, though it might have resisted the combination, which its injurious and alarming conduct excited, of the most powerful military confederacy with the wealthiest empire to that time known, yet the highest spirit in the people with very uncommon abilities in the leaders, was unable to avert the ruin which such a government hath an eternal tendency to bring upon itself. We have already had occasion to observe, that Solon introduced or left, in the Athenian constitution, a defect which had the most direct and irresistible tendency to its destruction, carefully providing for the responsibility of ministers, he committed absolute sovereignty immediately to the multitude, who could be responsible to none. The same power delegated to representatives who, at stated periods, should be responsible to the multitude, would not have been so hastily ruinous. He intended indeed that the councils of Areiopagus and of the 400 (afterwards 500) should balance the authority of the popular assembly; and they might have been effectual balances to a body representative of the people; but against sovereign power committed immediately to the people at large no balance could avail: in M 2 terested terested damagogues inciting, restraint was soon overborne, and so the Athenian government became, what, in the very age, we find it was called, and the people seem to have been even pleased to hear it called, A TYRANNY IN THE HANDS OF THE PEOPLE." In our review of the second volume of this work, we took notice of the author's allusions to the affairs of France, and of the terms in which he mentioned them. This was in the year 1790, when the events which have since so much disgraced the French revolution, the massacre of the priests, and the legal murder of the king and the Girondists, had not happened. In the present volume, Mr. Mitford has frequent allusions of the same nature; and one of those passages, particularly the note which accompanies it, is remarkable. We have seldom met with a more concise and more exact idea of a good government, than is expressed in the concluding lines of the note. We transcribe these passages the more readily, as they give a succinct view of one important circumstance described in the volume, the state of the Athenian people under the Thirty Tyrants: The concurrent testimony of cotemporary writers of different parties, assures us that, under the democracy, after it became absolute, the principal road to the honnors of the Athenian state was through bribery to the people, in various ways administered. An officer soliciting a command, would to little purpose relate the length and va riety of his service, or [shew] the wounds he had received in it, if his competitor had been more magnificent in theatrical exhibitions. An orator defending his client under criminal prosecution, considered the expences of that client for the people's amusement, of more importance to enumerate than any military or naval merits; or if he was conducting a criminal prosecution, he would not omit to detail the theatrical exhibitions with which his own family had entertained the people, in the hope, by so recommending himself the more efficaciously to urge the condemnation of his enemy. Under every view then of the circumstances of the times, it will appear evident that bribery, high bribery, would be absolutely necessary to the Thirty, for keeping the 3000 of their catalogue firm to their party. To mark, on all occasions, the most pointed partiality for them, to give them the most decided pre-eminence, and on the other hand, to take the strongest precautions against those not of the catalogue, was indispensible. The necessity then of bribing high would carry with it the necessity of increased violences and new crimes. The death of Theramenes had been a preparatory step. That able leader being removed, measures the most violent and injurious against the multitude, already deprived of arms, were no longer scrupled. Lands and country houses were seized for the benefit of the Thirty and their adherents, and shortly an order was issued for all not of the catalogue to quit Athens. The greater part took refuge in Pierus; but the jealousy of the oppressors did not allow them long to remain there. Fortunately the ruling party in the neighbouring city of Megara, being democratical, was friendly to their cause; and some resolution, of which no satisfactory account remains, had so altered things in the larger and more powerful city of Thebes, long the most virulent enemy of democracy and of Athens, that there also a disposition favorable to them prevailed Thebes, accordingly, and Megara became crowded with Athenian Fugitives *.' On the peace of Antalcidas, which closes his history of the confederacy against Lacedæmon, the author thus expresses himself: Agesilaus, it is evident, approved the treaty of Antalcidas, and it should seem that Xenophon saw nothing disgraceful in his concur rence in the measure †. . Certainly *If, in pursuing the course of Athenian affairs, the reader carrics in his recollection the progress of the French Revolution, he cannot fail to be struck with the many points of resemblance between the proceedings of the Thirty in Athens, with its council of Judicature, and of the committee of public welfare, in Paris, with its revolu tionary tribunal; and the consideration is not unimportant to Grecian history, inasmuch as it restores evident probability to the accounts of enormities which, however well attested, the desuetude of modern times, in the order of things established in even the worst of European governments, had rendered, till new example arose, almost incredible. And here the similitude between what in France is called democracy, and what in Greece was esteemed an oligarchy, will become striking. Their character, as it stands marked by their con duct, has hardly a difference; and thus it may appear that, with allowance for that latitude of expression which poetry may claim, Pope is right where he has said. "For forms of government let fools contest; The phrase, indeed, without a comment, is hazardous, yet it may be creditably explained thus: The form of a government; merely as it gives a claim to this or that title, democracy, aristocracy, monarchy, signifies little. That is really the best government which is so constituted, in whatever form, as most to insure a just administration.' But this cannot be absolute monarchy; for there all must depend on the accidental character of the reigning price; it cannot be democracy; for there the popular passion which interested demagogues may in the moment excite, or the exertions, not even of the most numerous, but of the most turbulent and least scrupulous party, will decide every thing: it cannot be oligarchy, or what is vulgarly called aristocracy; for there a part of the people has an inte rest separate from the rest. It can only be a government so mixed and balanced, that it may have strength to restrain popular folly and popular injustice, without being strong enough to support its own injustice or folly.' It is however remarkable that not a syllable about the treaty, or its consequences, occurs in the panegyric of Agesilaus. Plutarch • Certainly it would be difficult for those who have declaimed most vehemently against it, to shew how peace could have been given to Greece in any other manner. The abandoning of the Asian Greeks to subjection under Persia, is indeed a specious ground of reproach. It was unquestionably a surrender of the proudest and fairest claim of glory that Lacedæmon perhaps ever acquired t. But this seems not justly imputed as a peculiar crime or dishonour to Antalcidas. A similar, or rather a more disgraceful dereliction of the cause of the Asian Greeks, occurred on the conclusion of the Peloponnesian war. They were found by the Lacedæmonians under the protection (so half Greece would have termed it, but at worst under the dominion) of a Grecian people; they were left by them to the mercy of barbarians, in subjection to the Persian empire. But, on the present occasion, the Lacedæmonians had to alledge, that not they, but their enemies, had betrayed the common cause of the nation, by producing the necessity for recalling Agesilaus from his glorious exertions, which had restored the Asian Greeks to independency. A deep policy has, by some writers, without any apparent foundation, been attributed to the Persian court in this transaction. Considering the interest of Lacedæmon as distinct from the common interest of Greece, Antalcidas certainly served his country very ably. Simple and concise as the terms of the peace are, not only they appear directly calculated to promote the interest of Lacedæmon, but (except as far as dominion in Asia may have been an object of ambition) they answered the principal purposes of Lacedæmon completely. To break the growing power of Thebes by emancipating the Baotian towns, and to divide Corinth from Argos, had been the great ob. jects of the war, and were the immediate effects of the peace; for the more ready and quiet production of which Athens was bribed with the permission, contrary to the general spirit of the treaty, to retain the dominion of its three islands. Accordingly it is observed by Xenophon, that the Lacedæmonians established their credit and is very futile upon the subject, Artax. t. 3. p. 1868. In his life of Agesilaus (t. 2. p. 1111.) he says that Antalcidas was the political enemy of Agesilaus; but the contrary appears sufficiently evident from Xenophon; and were confirmation wanting, we have it from Plutarch himself; for, according even to his account, Agesilaus justified the treaty in argument, and supported it by deed; p. 1112. ed, H. Steph.' This is the only ground that Isocrates has specified, for his vehement invective against the peace of Antalcidas, in his Panathenaic, p. 496. v. 2. ed. Augur. One cannot but smile at the grave assertion of Diodorus, that the abandoning of the Asian Greeks was what hurt the Athenians and Thebans on this occasion. Diod. 1. 14. c. III. The Asian, like the European Greeks were divided between the aristocratical party and the democratical. Perhaps both would do as well under Persian as Lacedæmonian supremacy. The aristocratical would have been sure to suffer under Theban or Athenian.' influence |