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Jenyns, Objections
Soame Jenyns, The Objections to the Taxation of our American Colonies, by
[print edition page xxxiv]
the Legislature of Great Britain, Briefly Consider’d (London, 1765).
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John Locke, Two Treatises on Government, ed. P. Laslett, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960).
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Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, ed. Brian Vickers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).
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Daniel Marston, The Seven Years’ War (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2001).
Middleton, Bells
Richard Middleton, The Bells of Victory: The Pitt-Newcastle Ministry and the Conduct of the Seven Years’ War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
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Robert Molesworth, An Account of Denmark, As it Was in the Year 1692, fourth edition (London, 1738).
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Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays, tr. Michael Screech (London: Penguin Books, 1991).
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Thomas More, Utopia, ed. George M. Logan and Robert M. Adams, revised edition, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
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I wish to thank Professor Ran Halévi for his prompt assistance in placing the French translation of Montagu’s Reflections in the complicated and volatile context of French revolutionary politics.
[print edition page xxxviii]
[print edition page xxxix]
REFLECTIONS
ON THE
RISE AND FALL
OF THE
ANCIENT REPUBLICKS.
ADAPTED TO THE
PRESENT STATE
OF
GREAT BRITAIN.
Οὐ τί τῷδε, ἢ τῷδε δόξει, λογιζόμενος
Ἀλλὰ τί πέπρακται λέγων.
Lucian. Histor. Scribend.1
BY EDWARD WORTLEY MONTAGU, ESQ.
THE FOURTH EDITION
LONDON:
Printed for J. Rivington and Sons, T. Longman, S. Crowder, T. Cadell, T. Becket, and W. Fox.
Plutarch takes notice of a very remarkable law of Solon’s,
which declared every man infamous, who, in any sedition or civil dissention in the state, should continue neuter, and refuse to side with either party.a
Aulus Gellius, who gives a more circumstantial detail of this uncommon law, affirms the penalty to be
no less than confiscation of all the effects, and banishment of the delinquent.b
Cicero mentions the same law to his friend Atticus, and even makes the punishment capital, though he resolves at the same time not to conform to it under his present circumstances, unless his friend should advise him to the contrary.c
[print edition page 2]
Which of these relators has given us the real penalty annexed to this law by Solon, [2] is scarce worth our enquiry. But I cannot help observing, that strange as this law may appear at first sight, yet if we reflect upon the reasons of it, as they are assigned by Plutarch and A. Gellius, it will not appear unworthy of that great legislator.
The opinion of Plutarch is, “That Solon intended no citizen, as soon as ever he had provided for the security of his own private affairs, should be so unfeeling with respect to the public welfare as to affect a brutal insensibility,a and not sympathize with the distress and calamities of his country: but that he should immediately join the honester and juster party; and rather risque his all in defence of the side he had espoused, than keep aloof from danger till he saw which party proved the stronger.”4
