LETTER XXIV.
ANCIENT REPUBLICS, AND OPINIONS
OF PHILOSOPHERS.
DR. SWIFT.
My dear Sir,
THE authority of legiſlators and philoſophers, in ſupport of the ſyſtem we contend for, is not difficult to find. The greateſt lights of humanity, ancient and modern, have approved it, which renders it difficult to explain how it comes, in this enlightened age, to be called in queſtion, as it certainly has been, by others as well as Mr. Turgot. I ſhall begin with one, who, though ſeldom quoted as a legiſlator, appears to have conſidercd this ſubject, and furniſhed arguments enough, for ever to determine the queſtion. Dr. Swift, in his [[Conteſts and Diſſenſions between the Nobles and Commons of Athens and Rome]], obſerves, that the beſt legiſlators of all ages agree in this, that the abſolute power, which originally is in the whole body, is a truſt too great to be committed to any one man or aſſembly; and therefore, in their ſeveral inſtitutions of government, power in the laſt reſort, was always placed by them in balance, among the one, the few, and the many; and it will be an eternal rule in politics, among every free people, that there is a balance of power to be held by every ſtate within itſelf. A mixed government, partaking cf the known forms received in the
