I. The most unjust adoration the world bestows, is that which is given
to, and received by conquering Princes, they being only deserving of
the public hatred; while living, mankind pay them a forced obedience,
and when dead a courteous applause; the first is necessity, the second
folly.
II. What is a conqueror but a scourge, which the divine anger has sent
among us for our chastisement? What, but an animated pestilence, both
to his own kingdom, and those of the Princes his neighbours also;
a malignant star, which rules and influences nought but murders,
robberies, desolations, and conflagrations; a comet, which equally
threatens the destruction of cottages and of palaces; and, to sum up
the whole, a man who is the enemy of all other men, because in the
prosecution of his ambitious views, he would deprive all mankind of
their liberty, and take from many their lives and fortunes?
III. In this, as in many other things, I admire the superior judgment
of the Chinese. Isaac Vossius affirms, that in the annals of those
people, they do not celebrate warlike, but pacific Princes; neither do
they triumph in future ages, or acquire the applauses of posterity, who
have by their arms added new dominions to the state, but those who have
governed with justice and moderation the territories which descended to
them by inheritance. This is applauding with judgment.
IV. I don’t deny, that valour, military skill, and other endowments
peculiar to conquerors, are estimable; but only mean to inculcate, that
when they are accompanied with a tyrannic use, they cause those who
make such an application of them, to become objects of abhorrence and
detestation. There never was any man eminent for feats of wickedness,
who was not endued with great qualities of body and mind; at least,
they are rarely deficient in those of robustness, industry, and
bravery: but who, on this account, would employ himself in celebrating,
or becoming the panegyrist of malefactors?
V. It is not comparison, but identity, which I mean to propound and
enforce; for truly those great heroes, who are so celebrated by the
trumpets of fame, were in reality nothing better than malefactors in a
high form. If I was to set about writing a catalogue of the most famous
rogues who have figured on the theatre of the world, I should place at
the head of it, Alexander the Great, and Julius Cæsar.
VI. No one had a juster sense of his situation in this respect, nor
made a more candid acknowledgment of his profession and occupation,
than Antigonus King of Asia. When he was in the zenith of his
conquests, a philosopher dedicated a book to him which he had just
finished, the subject-matter of which was, an encomium on the virtue of
justice. As soon as Antigonus read the title of the book, he smiled,
and said, “It is certainly very _à propos_, to dedicate a treatise in
commemoration of the virtue of justice to me, who am robbing all the
world of every thing I can.”
VII. And although, neither Alexander, nor Cæsar, ever made so candid
a confession, they manifested sufficiently, that they were stung with
the remorse, and affected with the bitings of their own consciences.
The first, shewed the influence these feelings had over him, in the
instance of the temper and forbearance, with which he suffered the
pirate who fell into his hands, to upbraid him with being a greater
and more scandalous pirate than himself; for if Alexander had not been
conscious that the man spoke truth, the consequence of his boldness
would have been very terrible to him. The second displayed it, in
his perplexities at the crisis of passing the Rubicon; it being
most probable, that intrepid soul was not withheld so much by the
contemplation of the dangerous undertaking he was going to engage in,
as by the sense of the crime he was about to commit.