altogether unable to retard or do hurt to business, produces and
must produce the quickest despatch, and the most righteous
dictates of justice that are perhaps in human nature. The manner
I shall not stand in this place to describe, because it is
exemplified at large in the judicature of the people of Oceana.
And thus much of ancient prudence, and the first branch of this
preliminary discourse.

THE SECOND PART OF THE PRELIMINARIES

In the second part I shall endeavor to show the rise, progress,
and declination of modern prudence.

The date of this kind of policy is to be computed, as was
shown, from those inundations of Goths, Vandals, Huns, and
Lombards that overwhelmed the Roman Empire. But as there is no
appearance in the bulk or constitution of modern prudence, that
it should ever have been able to come up and grapple with the
ancient, so something of necessity must have interposed whereby
this came to be enervated, and that to receive strength and
encouragement. And this was the execrable reign of the Roman
emperors taking rise from (that felix scelus) the arms of Caesar,
in which storm the ship of the Roman Commonwealth was forced to
disburden itself of that precious freight, which never since
could emerge or raise its head but in the Gulf of Venice.

It is said in Scripture, "Thy evil is of thyself, O Israel!"
to which answers that of the moralists, "None is hurt but by
himself," as also the whole matter of the politics; at present
this example of the Romans, who, through a negligence committed