Description - Essay on the History of Mankind in Rude and Cultivated Ages by James Dunbar
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1782 Excerpt: ...In supporting political existence, they part with all the ideas of natural liberty: liberty: and the rigour of despotism alone, controlling the tendency of their manners, can secure that command of the national force which, in times of public danger, is necessary for the protection of their country. To avoid therefore the condition of a conquered people, they acquiesce in a constitutional tyranny, perhaps not less oppressive. Thus danger from abroad concurs with their domestic circumstances in the subversion of their natural rights; and neither the operations of peace nor of war supply the occasions which animate a rising people. The spirit of liberty, in its full strength, is not always superior to the sense of public danger. When thirty cities of Latium, confederated with the Sabines, threatened to crush in its infancy the Roman commonwealth, consternation and terror seized all ranks of men. And the dictatorship, a sort of temporary despotism, and a solecism in a free government, owed its original establishment to this alarming conjuncture. The confederacy, however, was quickly dissolved: the battle at the lake Regillus was of a decisive nature; and the men who had expelled the Tarquins were able to rule the storm. But had such perils, which were transient and accidental, been inherent in the foil; had the Romans been more liable to suffer, than prone to commence hostilities; had the possession of a more productive or extensive settle-. ment drawn upon them at first the envy of mankind, instead ofanimating their own ambition; the the necessity-of public affairs must have soon. rendered that magistracy perpetual, which was at first of so limited a duration, resorted to only in great emergencies, and during the flourishing ages of the commonwealth altogeth...
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