But the thing is not less in human nature. The
ancient world has furnished a strong and striking instance of such a
ground for faction, full as powerful and full as mischievous as our
spirit of religions system had ever been, exciting in all the states of
Greece (European and Asiatic) the most violent animosities and the most
cruel and bloody persecutions and proscriptions. These ancient factions
in each commonwealth of Greece connected themselves with those of the
same description in some other states; and secret cabals and public
alliances were carried on and made, not upon a conformity of general
political interests, but for the support and aggrandizement of the two
leading states which headed the aristocratic and democratic factions.
For as, in later times, the king of Spain was at the head of a Catholic,
and the king of Sweden of a Protestant interest, (France, though
Catholic, acting subordinately to the latter,) in the like manner the
Lacedemonians were everywhere at the head of the aristocratic interests,
and the Athenians of the democratic.
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