From the nature of despotic power it follows that the single person, invested with this power, commits the execution of it also to a single person. A man whom his senses continually inform that he himself is everything and that his subjects are nothing, is naturally lazy, voluptuous, and ignorant. In consequence of this, he neglects the management of public affairs. But were he to commit the administration to many, there would be continual disputes among them; each would form intrigues to be his first slave; and he would be obliged to take the reins into his own hands. It is, therefore, more natural for him to resign it to a vizir,[26] and to invest him with the same power as himself. The creation of a vizir is a fundamental law of this government.
It is related of a pope that he had started an infinite number of difficulties against his election, from a thorough conviction of his incapacity. At length he was prevailed on to accept of the pontificate, and resigned the administration entirely to his nephew. He was soon struck with surprise, and said, "I should never have thought that these things were so easy." The same may be said of the princes of the East, who, being educated in a prison where eunuchs corrupt their hearts and debase their understandings, and where they are frequently kept ignorant even of their high rank, when drawn forth in order to be placed on the throne, are at first confounded: but as soon as they have chosen a vizir, and abandoned themselves in their seraglio to the most brutal passions; pursuing, in the midst of a prostituted court, every capricious extravagance, they would never have dreamed that they could find matters so easy.
The more extensive the empire, the larger the seraglio; and consequently the more voluptuous the prince. Hence the more nations such a sovereign has to rule, the less he attends to the cares of government; the more important his affairs, the less he makes them the subject of his deliberations.
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1. Compare Aristotle, Politics, vi. 2.
2. Declamations, 17, 18.
3. See the Considerations on the Causes of the Grandeur and Decline of the Romans, 9.
4. Pp. 691, 693, ed. Wechel, 1596.
5. Bk. i.
6. Bk. iv, art. 15 et seq.
7. See in the Considerations on the Causes of the Grandeur and Decline of the Romans, 9, how this spirit of Servius Tullius was preserved in the republic.
8. Dionysius Halicarnassus, Eulogium of Isocrates, ii, p. 97, ed. Wechel. Pollux, viii. 10, art. 130.
9. See Aristotle's Politics, ii. 12.
10. Ibid, iv. 9.
11. See the oration of Demosthenes, De Falsa legat., and the oration against Timarchus.
12. They used even to draw two tickets for each place, one which gave the place, and the other which named the person who was to succeed, in case the first was rejected.
13. De Leg., i, iii.
14. They were called leges tabulares; two tablets were presented to each citizen, the first marked with an A, for Antique, or I forbid it; and the other with an U and an R, for Uti rogas, or Be it as you desire.
15. At Athens the people used to lift up their hands.
16. As at Venice.
17. The thirty tyrants at Athens ordered the suffrages of the Areopagites to be public, in order to manage them as they pleased. -- Lysias, Orat. contra Agorat. 8.
18. See Dionysius Halicarnassus, iv, ix.
19. See Mr. Addison, Travels to Italy, p. 16.
20. They were named at first by the consuls.
21. This is what ruined the republic of Rome. See Considerations on the Causes of the Grandeur and Decline of the Romans, 14, 16.
22. Tournefort, Voyages.
23. At Lucca the magistrates are chosen only for two months.
24. Diodorus, xviii, p. 601, ed. Rhodoman.
25. Ferdinand, king of Aragon, made himself grand master of the orders, and that alone changed the constitution.
26. The Eastern kings are never without vizirs, says Sir John Chardin.
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