The two leading powers kept alive a
constant cabal and conspiracy in every state, and the political dogmas
concerning the constitution of a republic were the great instruments by
which these leading states chose to aggrandize themselves. Their choice
was not unwise; because the interest in opinions, (merely as opinions,
and without any experimental reference to their effects,) when once they
take strong hold of the mind, become the most operative of all
interests, and indeed very often supersede every other.
I might further exemplify the possibility of a political sentiment
running through various states, and combining factions in them, from the
history of the Middle Ages in the Guelfs and Ghibellines. These were
political factions originally in favor of the Emperor and the Pope, with
no mixture of religious dogmas: or if anything religiously doctrinal
they had in them originally, it very soon disappeared; as their first
political objects disappeared also, though the spirit remained. They
became no more than names to distinguish factions: but they were not the
less powerful in their operation, when they had no direct point of
doctrine, either religious or civil, to assert.
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