Chapter II · OF ATHENS. (continued 2)

That luxury and corruption, encouraged and propagated by a most abandoned faction, have made an alarming progress in our nation, is a truth too evident to be denied. The effects have been too sensibly felt during the course of the late and present wars, which, until the last campaign, were the most expensive, and the least successful of any we ever yet engaged in. But a late signal change must convince our enemies, that we have a fund of publick virtue still remaining capable of vindicating our just rights, and raising us out of that calamitous situation, into which we were plunged, under some late administrations. When the publick imagined the helm in the hands of corruption, pusillanimity and ignorance, they transferred it to a virtuous citizen, possessed, in their opinion, of the zeal and eloquence of Demosthenes, joined to the publick economy, incorrupt honesty, and immovable fortitude of Aristides and Phocion. The numerous disinterested marks of approbation, so lately given from every part of this kingdom, demonstrate the resolution and ability of the publick to support that minister, as long as he pursues his upright plan of conduct with undeviating firmness.

From the time of Phocion, the Athenian history affords little more than a detail of scandalous decrees, and despicable instances of the levity and servile adulation of that abject people.179 Reduced at last to a province of the Romans, Athens contributed her taste for arts and sciences towards polishing, and her passion for theatrical performances towards corrupting the manners of that warlike people.