The works of D Jonathan Swift Author:Jonathan Swift Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A DISCOURSE O F T H E Contefts and Diflenfions BETWEEN THE NOBLES and the COMMONS in Athens and Rome; with the Confequenccs they had upon both ... more »thofe STATES. Si tibl vera videtur, Dede mama ; £5", ji falfa eji, accingere contra. Lucret. Written in the Year 1701. CHAP. I. IT is agreed, that in all Government there is an abfolute unlimited Power, which naturally and originally feemeth. to be placed in the whole Body, where-ever the executive Part of it lies. This holds in the Body natural. For where-ever we place ;he Beginning of Motion, whether from the Head, or the Heart, or the animal Spirits in general, the Body moveth and acteth by a Confentof all its Parts. This unlimited Power placed fundamentally in the Body of a People, is what the beft Legiflators of all Vol. J. B " AgesAges have endeavoured, in their feveral Schemes, or Inititutions of Government, to depofite in fuch Hands as would preferve the People from Rapine and Op- preffion within, as well as Violence from without. Moft of them feem to agree in this; that it was a Truft too great to be committed to any one Man, or Aflembly ; and therefore they left the Right ftill in the whole Body; but the Adminiftration or executive Part, in the Hands of One, the Few, or the Many : Into which three Powers, all independent Bodies of Men feem naturally to divide. For by all I have read of thofe innumerable and petty Commonwealths in Italy, Greece, and Sicily, as well as the great ones of Carthage and Rome; it feemeth to me, that a free People met together, whether by Compafl or Family Goiernment, as foon as they fall into any Acts of Civil Society, do, of themfelves, divide into three Powers. The firft is, that of fome one eminent Spirit, who having fignalized his Valour, and Fortune in Defence of...« less