affairs, with aſſiduity and moderation; whilſt the remembrance of their paſt ſufferings continued freſh upon their minds. But this authority afterwards devolving upon their ſons, who had not ſeen theſe changes, nor experienced the miſeries of tyranny, they began to grow ſo diſſatisfied with that ſort of civil equality, that they caſt off all reſtraint, and giving themſelves up to rapine, ambition, and luſt, ſoon changed the government again from ariſtocracy into an oligarchy. Their adminiſtration, however, becoming as inſupportable, in a while, as the tyranny of the other had formerly been, the people naturally began to look out for ſome deliverer; and, having fixed upon a leader, they put themſelves under his banners, and eſtabliſhed oligarchy. But when they had done this, and came to reflect upon the oppreſſions they ſuſtained under a tyrant, they reſolved never to be again governed by any one man, and therefore agreed to ſet up a popular government; which was conſtituted in ſuch a manner, that the chief authority was not veiled either in a prince or in a junto of the nobility.
Now, as all new eſtabliſhments are held in ſome degree of reverence and veneration at firſt, this form ſubſiſted for ſome time; though no longer than thoſe people lived, who had been the founders of it: for, after their death, their deſcendants degenerated into licentiouſneſs, and ſuch a contempt for all authority and diſtinction, that, every man living after his own caprice, there was nothing to be ſeen but confuſion and violence: ſo that, either by the advice of ſome good and reſpectable man, or compelled by the abſolute neceſſity of providing a remedy for theſe diſorders and enormities, they at laſt determined once more to ſubmit to the dominion of one: from which ſtate they fell again in time, through the ſame gradations, and from the
