a person of learning, of unquestioned merit, and of unsuspected loyalty, was put to death for no other reason, than that he had a pedantic countenance which displeased the emperor.  This very monster of mankind appeared in the beginning of his reign to be a person of virtue.  Many of the greatest tyrants on the records of history have begun their reigns in the fairest manner.  But the truth is, this unnatural power corrupts both the heart and the understanding.  And to prevent the least hope of amendment, a king is ever surrounded by a crowd of infamous flatterers, who find their account in keeping him from the least light of reason, till all ideas of rectitude and justice are utterly erased from his mind.  When Alexander had in his fury inhumanly butchered one of his best friends and bravest captains; on the return of reason he began to conceive an horror suitable to the guilt of such a murder.  In this juncture his council came to his assistance.  But what did his council?  They found him out a philosopher who gave him comfort.  And in what manner did this philosopher comfort him for the loss of such a man, and heal his conscience, flagrant with the smart of such a crime?  You have the matter at length in Plutarch.  He told him, “that let a sovereign do what he wilt, all his actions are just and lawful, because they are his.”  The palaces of all princes abound with such courtly philosophers.  The consequence was such as might be expected.  He grew every day a monster more abandoned to unnatural lust, to debauchery, to drunkenness, and to murder.  And yet this was originally a great man, of uncommon capacity, and a strong propensity to virtue.  But unbounded power proceeds step by step, until it has eradicated every laudable principle.  It has been remarked, that there is no prince so bad, whose favorites and ministers are not worse.  There is hardly any prince without a favorite, by whom he is governed in as arbitrary a manner as he governs the wretches subjected to him.  Here the tyranny is doubled.  There are two courts, and two interests; both very different from the interests of the people.  The favorite knows that the regard of a tyrant is as unconstant and capricious as that of a woman; and concluding his time to be short, he makes haste to fill up the measure of his iniquity, in rapine, in luxury, and in revenge.  Every avenue to the throne is shut up.  He oppresses and ruins the people, whilst he persuades the prince that those murmurs raised by his own oppression are the effects of disaffection to the prince’s government.  Then is the natural violence of despotism inflamed and aggravated by hatred and revenge.  To deserve well of the state is a crime against the prince.  To be popular, and to be a traitor, are considered as synonymous terms.  Even virtue is dangerous, as an aspiring quality, that claims an esteem by itself, and independent of the countenance of the court.  What has been said of the chief, is true of the inferior officers