Whatever was the cause, certain it is, that the Demus at whose hands (like almost every man of any distinction) he suffered banishment, at least received no quarter at his. Professor Wachsmuth is disposed, on this account, to consider him as a prejudiced witness. Yet, judging him by what so many other writers have said upon the same subject, and allowing him the benefit of the indulgence extended, as we have seen, by that learned person to the fault-finding Theopompus, Xenophon may claim to have spoken no more than the truth, of what he actually saw and suffered in the daily course of things at Athens. We shall presently refer to the testimony of the orator Lysias, whose prepossessions (if he had any) lay all the other way. His orations afford us a living picture, as it were, of what passed in the ordinary administration of justice, if that sacred name may, without profaning it, be applied to a tyranny as unscrupulous and violent as any thing recorded of the revolutionary tribunals of France, and, if possible, more shameless still. In the midst of the familiar occurrence of such things, for example, as the popular phrenzy about the mutilation of the Hermæ, and the wholesale massacres to which it led-of the barbarous murders of the generals who conquered at Arginusæ, and who were rewarded for one of the greatest naval victories of antiquity with a sentence without a trial, and an ignominious death*of the sacrifice of Socrates, in mere wantonness of arbitrary power, or to appease some vulgar clamor for his blood-how is it to be wondered at that these writers should look with envy, as so many of them do, at the order and peace enjoyed at Sparta, under the reign of the law, and should infer that there was something radically wrong in the constitution of a society exposed, apparently without all hope of remedy, to a sort of perpetual reign of terror?

Yet Xenophon's feelings upon this subject, however strong, have infused, at least, no rancor or acerbity into his expression of them. He betrays, rather than declares them, in his preference for Doric manners and Spartan character-in the evident complacency with which he paints his (imaginary ?)

* Eschines (the pseudo-Socratic) says they had only two voices out of thirty thousand: De Morte, c. 12. For the heroic conduct of Socrates, on that occasion, see Xenoph. Hellenic. I. 7. But a better account than Xenophon's, of that most revolting judicial murder, is to be found (where one might hardly expect it) in Diod. Siculus, 1. XIII. c. 104. There is nothing, in all history, more sublime than the conduct, on that occasion, of Diomedon, one of the accused.

Cyrus, the beau-idéal of an absolute monarch-and in the various passages of his dialogues, in which he speaks of the evils of the existing democracy as of things of course, and unquestionable matters of fact. In one of his works-a treatise professedly dedicated to a defence of the Demus against some of the more specious objections of its enemies-he does indulge, it must be owned, in a vein of mischievous irony worthy of Swift. This work has been deemed by some, perhaps, most recent critics, to be Xenophon's-but there is nothing but conjectural evidence to show the contrary, and Böckh declares for himself, that he considers the argument on that side as inconclusive. Certainly the author's hostility to the existing democracy is no proof of its spuriousness, for passages may be cited from the Economics, or (if that too is questioned) from the Convivium, as bad as any thing in this essay, and if a more minute criticism should incline us to think it the production of a later head, we shall be obliged to confess it is a very probable figment, and in spirit and opinions, if not in style, bears a strong family likeness to the genuine offspring of Xenophon's pen. It is, as we have said, a piece of ultra-Socratic irony. It enumerates, one by one, the principal abuses of the system of demagogy, which, at that time, rendered the very name of popular government odious, as we have seen, to people of sense and education. He admits them to exist, and in the worst form, but affects to justify them as essential to the very being of democracy itself. If he is told that such things are inconsistent with every idea of good government and social order, he answers, that nothing is more possible-he does not pretend to dispute it-he is not discoursing about forms of polity in the abstract, and their relative virtues and advantages, neither does he profess to find realized, in that, his own idea of a Perfect Commonwealth. What he undertakes to show is, that the imperfections imputed to the democracy are inherent in its nature, and inseparable from it-that they who desire it as an end, must consent to the use of the necessary means-that the Athenian Demus is not what it is, the most detestable and licentious of all perversions of society, by any accident or disturbing causes, but by design and on system, with a perfect consciousness of its own objects, and a policy profoundly

Pub. Econ. of Athens, v. I. p. 62. n. (transl.) Wachsmuth, also, quotes without questioning it.

calculated to attain them. In reading this piece, one is continually reminded of Machiavelli's Principe, except that the mob of Athens take the place of his heroes and models, such as Borgia and Castruccio-and except, too, the irony. The Italian had a taste for what he recommends as medicine Xenophon sickens while he prescribes, and desires and means that his patient should reject the loathsome potion. Some passages of the treatise are quite curious enough to be worth extracting for the benefit of our readers, if we had the space necessary to do them justice. As it is, we must content ourselves with remarking, that the general drift of the author is to show that the demagogues of the day taught a people intoxicated with arbitrary power, and impatient of all restraint, as careless of every obligation, to live like a nest of Barbary pirates on the plunder of every thing around themthat, like other spoilers, they regarded the commonwealth itself as "lawful prize"-that, instead of governing their foreign dependencies with a view to their own benefit and that of the state, which would naturally flourish by their prosperity, and strengthen with their strength, they were laid waste by oppressive exactions to supply the cravings of a worthless populace that the rich at home were fleeced in the same manner by a system of unequal taxation, and through a corrupt administration of justice, while their estates in the country were given up, without defence, to be devastated by the enemy in wars, provoked by the abuse of their maritime power in the hands of the same lawless multitude—in short, that, instead of a government of laws extending its protection to all, it was one scene of violence and brigandage, in which the physical force of the many usurped all the functions, only to violate all the ends of civil society, and the revenues of the commonwealth and the property of individuals, were alike tre ated as a mere fund for the support of the vicious, the profligate, and the idle. In other works of Xenophon, as we have said, we find substantially the same things charged to the people of Athens. In his Banquet (c. 4. 29.) he represents one of the interlocutors of the dialogue as expatiating upon the advantages of poverty, the chief of which was its perfect independence. Instead of trembling for its own safety, it bullied others; instead of living in slavery, it was free; instead of paying court, it was itself flattered and caressed; instead of being suspected by the country, it enjoyed its sympathy and confidence. When I was rich, he adds, I fawned

upon the sycophants, in whose power I continually was. I was fain to be forever spending money for the public; I was not allowed to go abroad; if I was seen with Socrates, I was reprimanded for it-whereas now I do as I like, keep what company I choose, am courted by the rich, in favor with the government, a tyrant, not a slave; and instead of paying tribute to the state, the state pays tribute to me, and makes me a sharer in its revenues. In another of his works,† Socrates boasts that with a fortune, his house and all counted, of some five minæ, (about twenty pounds sterling,) he looked upon himself as a much richer man than Critobulus with at least a hundred times as much. The larger estate was accompanied with disproportionate outgoings in lavish expenditures for sacrifices, without which he would be tolerated by neither gods nor men-and in magnificent hospitality, in feasting, and in charity. But besides these, he enumerates the various taxes imposed upon the rich, who were required to incur immense expenses in what were called the Liturgies-that is, in furnishing the funds for public festivals and entertainments, choruses, and processions in time of peace, and in keeping horses, equipping ships, and paying extraordinary contributions in time of war. And the worst of it is, adds he, that if you fall short of what is expected of you in any of these things, the Athenians punish you just as if you had robbed them of what was theirs. We will remark, by the way, that this subject of Liturgies and taxation, is so important to a proper understanding of the Public Economy of Athens, that Böckh's admirable illustrations of it cannot be too often recommended to the attention of the curious reader.

It is manifest, from the tone of their works, that both Plato and Xenophon write in the spirit of what is called a reaction. The abuses of popular government which they daily witnessed, had disgusted them with popular government itself. This is the peculiar evil of misrule in that shape, and what makes the demagogue, whose accursed mission it is to seduce and debauch a free people, and to fit it, by vice, for bondage, a greater scourge than an Attila or a Gengis Khan. He is the worst enemy of the species, because he destroys the foundation of its best hopes-its faith in itself.-The usurper may

* We need scarcely say this word meant, at that time, a common informer, that is, a courtier of the democracy, whose service was public delation and prose

cution.

+ Econom. c. 2.

be dethroned, the conqueror may be overthrown, but to what purpose, when his successor must be as bad as he? Men who have seen the most cultivated and enlightened nations led or driven into the worst crimes by wretches like Cleon or Robespierre-who have seen polished capitals, like Athens or Paris, the glory of the earth, seats of the highest civilization, and filled with the trophies of genius, become theatres of horrors worthy only of the most savage hordes, drenched in gore by a banditti of Septembriseurs, doing murder in broad daylight, or delivered up to the hellish orgies of mobs made cruel by suspicion, or drunk with blood—who have witnessed judicial massacre solemnly perpetrated in the name of the law, and decrees of flagrant iniquity, and revolting for their barbarity, sanctioned by the votes of majorities, made up of mild and merciful, but timid and feeble men who have heard shouts of liberty uttered by multitudes, subjugated by terror, and cringing before the idols of their own creation, and seen (what is the infallible consequence of such excesses) the reptile demagogue a moment before "squat like a toad" at the ear of his victim, "start up in his own shape the fiend," and stand confessed the tyrant — such men must not be too sternly judged, and may even be pitied and pardoned, if they despair of the fortunes of humanity. "Wo to the world because of such offences, but wo to the man by whom the offence cometh." Plutarch, in his life of Timoleon, relates, that the people of Syracuse, after long years of a most disastrous experience of this connexion between the demagogue and the tyrant, hated at last the very sight of the Bema and the Agora-the stage on which their popular leaders had been accustomed to play off their impostures, and from which so many of them (that sterling democrat, the elder Dionysius, for example,) had been raised to despotic power. It was this sort of discouragement that possessed the minds even of the wisest men of Greece at the period referred to. The language they uttered was akin to the affecting apostrophe of Brutus at Philippi, and their last hope was in a sort of political millennium, when Philosophy should be seated upon the throne. Thus it was, that while Xenophon idealized monarchical despotism in the Cyropedia, Plato, on the contrary, sought to realize his dreams of a perfect social state, by educating the younger Dyonisius to exercise power according to the principles of the academy-a sad failure, compensated by his brilliant success with the great republican hero, the avenger Dio.