motive, have not scrupled to sacrifice the national tranquillity to
personal advantage or personal gratification.
The celebrated Pericles, in compliance with the resentment of a
prostitute,1 at the expense of much of the blood and treasure of
his countrymen, attacked, vanquished, and destroyed the city of the
SAMNIANS. The same man, stimulated by private pique against the
MEGARENSIANS,2 another nation of Greece, or to avoid a
prosecution with which he was threatened as an accomplice of a
supposed theft of the statuary Phidias,3 or to get rid of the
accusations prepared to be brought against him for dissipating the
funds of the state in the purchase of popularity,4 or from a
combination of all these causes, was the primitive author of that
famous and fatal war, distinguished in the Grecian annals by the
name of the PELOPONNESIAN war; which, after various vicissitudes,
intermissions, and renewals, terminated in the ruin of the Athenian
commonwealth.
The ambitious cardinal, who was prime minister to Henry VIII.,
permitting his vanity to aspire to the triple crown,5
entertained hopes of succeeding in the acquisition of that splendid
prize by the influence of the Emperor Charles V. To secure the
favor and interest of this enterprising and powerful monarch, he
precipitated England into a war with France, contrary to the
plainest dictates of policy, and at the hazard of the safety and
independence, as well of the kingdom over which he presided by his
counsels, as of Europe in general. For if there ever was a
sovereign who bid fair to realize the project of universal monarchy,
it was the Emperor Charles V., of whose intrigues Wolsey was at once
the instrument and the dupe.
The influence which the bigotry of one female,6 the
petulance of another,7 and the cabals of a third,8 had in