despot, there is no positive oppression by officers of state, but in
which all the collective interests of the people are managed for them,
all the thinking that has relation to collective interests done for
them, and in which their minds are formed by, and consenting to, this
abdication of their own energies. Leaving things to the government,
like leaving them to Providence, is synonymous with caring nothing
about them, and accepting their results, when disagreeable, as
visitations of Nature. With the exception, therefore, of a few
studious men who take an intellectual interest in speculation for its
own sake, the intelligence and sentiments of the whole people are
given up to the material interests, and when these are provided for,
to the amusement and ornamentation of private life. But to say this is
to say, if the whole testimony of history is worth any thing, that the
era of national decline has arrived; that is, if the nation had ever
attained any thing to decline from. If it has never risen above the
condition of an Oriental people, in that condition it continues to
stagnate; but if, like Greece or Rome, it had realized any thing
higher, through the energy, patriotism, and enlargement of mind,
which, as national qualities, are the fruits solely of freedom, it
relapses in a few generations into the Oriental state. And that state
does not mean stupid tranquillity, with security against change for
the worse; it often means being overrun, conquered, and reduced to
domestic slavery either by a stronger despot, or by the nearest
barbarous people who retain along with their savage rudeness the
energies of freedom.

Such are not merely the natural tendencies, but the inherent
necessities of despotic government; from which there is no outlet,
unless in so far as the despotism consents not to be despotism; in so
far as the supposed good despot abstains from exercising his power,