“Pejoraque saecula ferri
               Temporibus, quorum sceleri non invenit ipsa
               Nomen, et a nullo posuit natura metallo;”

["And, worse than the iron ages, for whose crimes there is no
similitude in any of Nature’s metals.”—­Juvenal, xiii. 28.]

but not to my own.  I am, in particular, too much oppressed by them:  for, in my neighbourhood, we are, of late, by the long licence of our civil wars, grown old in so riotous a form of state,

“Quippe ubi fas versum atque nefas,”

          ["Where wrong and right have changed places.” 
          —­Virgil, Georg., i. 504.]

that in earnest, ’tis a wonder how it can subsist: 

          “Armati terram exercent, semperque recentes
          Convectare juvat praedas; et vivere rapto.”

     ["Men plough, girt with arms; ever delighting in fresh robberies,
     and living by rapine.”—­AEneid, vii. 748.]

In fine, I see by our example, that the society of men is maintained and held together, at what price soever; in what condition soever they are placed, they still close and stick together, both moving and in heaps; as ill united bodies, that, shuffled together without order, find of themselves a means to unite and settle, often better than they could have been disposed by art.  King Philip mustered up a rabble of the most wicked and incorrigible rascals he could pick out, and put them all together into a city he had caused to be built for that purpose, which bore their name:  I believe that they, even from vices themselves, erected a government amongst them, and a commodious and just society.  I see, not one action, or three, or a hundred, but manners, in common and received use, so ferocious, especially in inhumanity and treachery, which are to me the worst of all vices, that I have not the heart to think of them without horror; and almost as much admire as I detest them:  the exercise of these signal villainies carries with it as great signs of vigour and force of soul, as of error and disorder.  Necessity reconciles and brings men together; and this accidental connection afterwards forms itself into laws:  for there have been such, as savage as any human opinion could conceive, who, nevertheless, have maintained their body with as much health and length of life as any Plato or Aristotle could invent.  And certainly, all these descriptions of polities, feigned by art, are found to be ridiculous and unfit to be put in practice.

These great and tedious debates about the best form of society, and the most commodious rules to bind us, are debates only proper for the exercise of our wits; as in the arts there are several subjects which have their being in agitation and controversy, and have no life but there.  Such an idea of government might be of some value in a new world; but we take a world already made, and formed to certain customs; we do not beget it, as Pyrrha or Cadmus did.