Parties in religion and politics make sufficient discoveries concerning each other, to give a sober man a proper caution against them all.  The monarchic, and aristocratical, and popular partisans, have been jointly laying their axes to the root of all government, and have, in their turns, proved each other absurd and inconvenient.  In vain you tell me that artificial government is good, but that I fall out only with the abuse.  The thing! the thing itself is the abuse!  Observe, my lord, I pray you, that grand error upon which all artificial legislative power is founded.  It was observed, that men had ungovernable passions, which made it necessary to guard against the violence they might offer to each other.  They appointed governors over them for this reason.  But a worse and more perplexing difficulty arises, how to be defended against the governors? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? In vain they change from a single person to a few.  These few have the passions of the one; and they unite to strengthen themselves, and to secure the gratification of their lawless passions at the expense of the general good.  In vain do we fly to the many.  The case is worse; their passions are less under the government of reason, they are augmented by the contagion, and defended against all attacks by their multitude.

I have purposely avoided the mention of the mixed form of government, for reasons that will be very obvious to your lordship.  But my caution can avail me but little.  You will not fail to urge it against me in favor of political society.  You will not fail to show how the errors of the several simple modes are corrected by a mixture of all of them, and a proper balance of the several powers in such a state.  I confess, my lord, that this has been long a darling mistake of my own; and that of all the sacrifices I have made to truth, this has been by far the greatest.  When I confess that I think this notion a mistake, I know to whom I am speaking, for I am satisfied that reasons are like liquors, and there are some of such a nature as none but strong heads can bear.  There are few with whom I can communicate so freely as with Pope.  But Pope cannot bear every truth.  He has a timidity which hinders the full exertion of his faculties, almost as effectually as bigotry cramps those of the general herd of mankind.  But whoever is a genuine follower of truth keeps his eye steady upon his guide, indifferent whither he is led, provided that she is the leader.  And, my lord, if it be properly considered, it were infinitely better to remain possessed by the whole legion of vulgar mistakes, than to reject some, and at the same time to retain a fondness for others altogether as absurd and irrational.  The first has at least a consistency, that makes a man, however erroneously, uniform at least; but the latter way of proceeding is such an inconsistent chimera and jumble of philosophy and vulgar prejudice, that hardly anything more ridiculous can be conceived.  Let us therefore freely, and without fear or prejudice, examine this last contrivance of policy.  And, without considering how near the quick our instruments may come, let us search it to the bottom.