The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift/Volume 2/A Discourse of the Contests and Dissensions between the Nobles and the Commons in Athens and Rome/Chapter 4

by Jonathan Swift

CHAP. IV.

UPON the subject of impeachments we may observe, that the custom of accusing the nobles to the people, either by themselves, or their orators, (now styled an impeachment in the name of the commons) has been very ancient both in Greece and Rome, as well as Carthage; and therefore may seem to be the inherent right of a free people, nay, perhaps it is really so: but then it is to be considered, first, that this custom was peculiar to republicks, or such states where the administration lay principally in the hands of the commons, and ever raged more or less, according to their encroachments upon absolute power; having been always looked upon by the wisest men and best authors of those times, as an effect of licentiousness, and not of liberty; a distinction, which no multitude, either represented or collective, has been at any time very nice in observing. However, perhaps this custom in a popular state of impeaching particular men, may seem to be nothing else, but the people's choosing upon occasion to exercise their own jurisdiction in person; as if a king of England should sit as chief justice in his court of king's bench; which, they say, in former times he sometimes did. But in Sparta, which was called a kingly government, though the people were perfectly free, yet because the administration was in the two kings and the ephori, with the assistance of the senate, we read of no impeachments by the people; nor was the process against great men, either upon account of ambition or ill conduct, though it reached sometimes to kings themselves, ever formed that way, as I can recollect, but only passed through those hands, where the administration lay. So likewise, during the regal government in Rome, though it was instituted a mixed monarchy, and the people made great advances in power, yet I do not remember to have read of one impeachment from the commons against a patrician, until the consular state began, and the people had made great encroachments upon the administration.

Another thing to be considered is, that allowing this right of impeachment to be as inherent as they please, yet, if the commons have been perpetually mistaken in the merits of the causes and the persons, as well as in the consequences of such impeachments upon the peace of the state, we cannot conclude less, than that the commons in Greece and Rome (whatever they may be in other states) were by no means qualified either as prosecutors or judges in such matters; and therefore, that it would have been prudent, to have reserved these privileges dormant, never to be produced but upon very great and urging occasions, where the state is in apparent danger, the universal body of the people in clamours against the administration, and no other remedy in view. But for a few popular orators or tribunes, upon the score of personal piques; or to employ the pride they conceive in seeing themselves at the head of a party; or as a method for advancement; or moved by certain powerful arguments that could make Demosthenes Philippize: for such men, I say, when the state would of itself gladly be quiet, and has, besides, affairs of the last importance upon the anvil, to impeach Miltiades after a great naval victory, for not pursuing the Persian fleet; to impeach Aristides, the person most versed among them in the knowledge and practice of their laws, for a blind suspicion of his acting in an arbitrary way, that is, as they expound it, not in concert with the people; to impeach Pericles, after all his services, for a few inconsiderable accounts; or to impeach Phocion, who had been guilty of no other crime but negotiating a treaty for the peace and security of his country: what could the continuance of such proceedings end in, but the utter discouragement of all virtuous actions and persons, and consequently in the ruin of a state? therefore the historians of those ages seldom fail to set this matter in all its lights, leaving us in the highest and most honourable ideas of those persons, who suffered by the persecution of the people, together with the fatal consequences they had, and how the persecutors seldom failed to repent, when it was too late.

These impeachments perpetually falling upon many of the best men both in Greece and Rome, are a cloud of witnesses, and examples enough to discourage men of virtue and abilities from engaging in the service of the publick; and help on the other side to introduce the ambitious, the covetous, the superficial, and the ill-designing; who are as apt to be bold, and forward, and meddling, as the former are to be cautious, and modest, and reserved. This was so well known in Greece, that an eagerness after employments in the state, was looked upon by wise men, as the worst title a man could set up: and made Plato say, That if all men were as good as they ought to be, the quarrel in a commonwealth would be, not as it is now, who should be ministers of state, but who should not be so. And Socrates is introduced by Xenophon^[1] severely chiding a friend of his for not entering into the publick service, when he was everyway qualified for it: such a backwardness there was at that time among good men to engage with a usurping people, and a set of pragmatical ambitious orators. And Diodorus tells us^[2], that when the petalism was erected at Syracuse, in imitation of the ostracism^[3] at Athens, it was so notoriously levelled against all who had either birth or merit to recommend them, that whoever possessed either, withdrew for fear, and would have no concern in publick affairs. So that the people themselves were forced to abrogate it, for fear of bringing all things into confusion.

There is one thing more to be observed, wherein all the popular impeachments in Greece and Rome seem to have agreed; and that was, a notion they had of being concerned in point of honour to condemn whatever person they impeached, however frivolous the articles were, upon which they began, or however weak the surmises, whereon they were to proceed in their proofs. For, to conceive that the body of the people could be mistaken, was an indignity not to be imagined, till the consequences had convinced them, when it was past remedy. And I look upon this as a fate, to which all popular accusations are subject; though I should think that the saying, Vox populi vox Dei, ought to be understood of the universal bent and current of a people, not of the bare majority of a few representatives, which is often procured by little arts, and great industry and application; wherein those, who engage in the pursuits of malice and revenge, are much more sedulous than such as would prevent them.

From what has been deduced of the dissensions in Rome between the two bodies of patricians and plebeians, several reflections may be made.

First, That when the balance of power is duly fixed in a state, nothing is more dangerous or unwise, than to give way to the first steps of popular encroachments; which is usually done either in hopes of procuring ease and quiet from some vexatious clamour, or else made merchandize, and merely bought and sold. This is breaking into a constitution to serve a present expedient, or supply a present exigency: the remedy of an empirick, to stifle the present pain, but with certain prospect of sudden and terrible returns. When a child grows easy and content by being humoured; and when a lover becomes satisfied by small compliances, without farther pursuits; then expect to find popular assemblies content with small concessions. If there could one single example be brought from the whole compass of history, of any one popular assembly, who, after beginning to contend for power, ever sat down quietly with a certain share; or if one instance could be produced of a popular assembly, that ever knew, or proposed, or declared what share of power was their due; then might there be some hopes, that it were a matter to be adjusted by reasonings, by conferences, or debates: but since all that is manifestly otherwise, I see no other course to be taken in a settled state, than a steady constant resolution in those, to whom the rest of the balance is entrusted, never to give way so far to popular clamours, as to make the least breach in the constitution, through which a million of abuses and encroachments will certainly in time force their way.

Again, from this deduction it will not be difficult to gather and assign certain marks of popular encroachments; by observing which, those who hold the balance in a state may judge of the degrees, and, by early remedies and application, put a stop to the fatal consequences that would otherwise ensue. What those marks are, has been at large deduced, and need not be here repeated.

Another consequence is this: that (with all respect for popular assemblies be it spoken) it is hard to recollect one folly, infirmity, or vice, to which a single man is subjected, and from which a body of commons, either collective or represented, can be wholly exempt. For, beside that they are composed of men with all their infirmities about them, they have also the ill fortune to be generally led and influenced by the very worst among themselves, I mean, popular orators, tribunes, or, as they are now styled, great speakers, leading men, and the like. Whence it comes to pass, that in their results we have sometimes found the same spirit of cruelty and revenge, of malice and pride, the same blindness and obstinacy and unsteadiness, the same ungovernable rage and anger, the same injustice, sophistry, and fraud, that ever lodged in the breast of any individual.

Again, in all free states the evil to be avoided is tyranny, that is to say, the summa imperii or unlimited power solely in the hands of the one, the few, or the many. Now, we have shown, that although most revolutions of government in Greece and Rome began with the tyranny of the people, yet they generally concluded in that of a single person; so that a usurping populace is its own dupe; a mere underworker, and a purchaser in trust for some single tyrant, whose state and power they advance to their own ruin, with as blind an instinct, as those worms that die with weaving magnificent habits for beings of a superiour nature to their own.

1. Lib. Memorab.
2. Lib. 11.
3. Ostracism was a kind of popular sentence to banishment passed against men whose personal influence, from whatever cause, was thought to render them dangerous to the state: the votes were given by writing the name of the person on a shell, by the Greeks, called ὄςρακον, and casting the shell into an urn.
   Petalism was a sentence nearly of the same kind; and as ostracism was denominated from the shell, on which the name of the suspected party was written, petalism took its name from ϖέταλον, a leaf, which the Syracusians used for the same purpose.