commonwealths, to have been, or to be, free and happy, and to owe their freedom and happiness to their political constitution.  Yet, allowing all this, what defence does this make for artificial society in general, that these inconsiderable spots of the globe have for some short space of time stood as exceptions to a charge so general?  But when we call these governments free, or concede that their citizens were happier than those which lived under different forms, it is merely ex abundanti.  For we should be greatly mistaken, if we really thought that the majority of the people which filled these cities enjoyed even that nominal political freedom of which I have spoken so much already.  In reality, they had no part of it.  In Athens there were usually from ten to thirty thousand freemen; this was the utmost.  But the slaves usually amounted to four hundred thousand, and sometimes to a great many more.  The freemen of Sparta and Rome were not more numerous in proportion to those whom they held in a slavery even more terrible than the Athenian.  Therefore state the matter fairly:  the free states never formed, though they were taken altogether, the thousandth part of the habitable globe; the freemen in these states were never the twentieth part of the people, and the time they subsisted is scarce anything in that immense ocean of duration in which time and slavery are so nearly commensurate.  Therefore call these free states, or popular governments, or what you please; when we consider the majority of their inhabitants, and regard the natural rights of mankind, they must appear, in reality and truth, no better than pitiful and oppressive oligarchies.

After so fair an examen, wherein nothing has been exaggerated; no fact produced which cannot be proved, and none which has been produced in any wise forced or strained, while thousands have, for brevity, been omitted; after so candid a discussion in all respects; what slave so passive, what bigot so blind, what enthusiast so headlong, what politician so hardened, as to stand up in defence of a system calculated for a curse to mankind? a curse under which they smart and groan to this hour, without thoroughly knowing the nature of the disease, and wanting understanding or courage to supply the remedy.

I need not excuse myself to your lordship, nor, I think, to any honest man, for the zeal I have shown in this cause; for it is an honest zeal, and in a good cause.  I have defended natural religion against a confederacy of atheists and divines.  I now plead for natural society against politicians, and for natural reason against all three.  When the world is in a fitter temper than it is at present to hear truth, or when I shall be more indifferent about its temper, my thoughts may become more public.  In the mean time, let them repose in my own bosom, and in the bosoms of such men as are fit to be initiated in the sober mysteries of truth and reason.  My antagonists have already done as much as I could desire.