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106 ANCIENT GREECE. [CHAP. ix.the state, no less than each individual, as a moral person.Moral powers have influence in it,and decide its plans ofoperation. Hence it becomes the great object of him whowould manage a state, to secure to reason the superiorityover passion and desire ;and the attainment of virtue andmorality, is in this sense an object of the state, justshould be of the individual.If withas itthese previousreflections we proceed to investigate the laws of the Greeks, they will present themselves toour view in their true light.The constitutions of theirlike those of the moderns, were framed by necessity,But as abuses are muchcities,and developed by circumstances.sooner felt in small states and towns, than in large ones, thenecessity of reforms was early felt in many of them ;andthis necessity occasioned lawgivers to make their appearance, much before the spirit of speculation had been occupied on the subject of politics.The objects therefore ofthose lawgivers were altogether practical ; and, without theknowledge of any philosophical system, they endeavouredto accomplish them by means of reflection and experience.A commonwealth could never have been conceived of bythem, except as governing itself; and on this foundationthey rested their codes. It never occurred to them, to lookfor the means of that self-government, to nothing but theforms of government and; although those forms were notleft unnoticed in their codes, yet they were noticed only toa certain degree. No Grecian lawgiver ever thought ofabolishing entirely the ancient usage, and becoming, according to the phrase now in vogue, the framers of a newconstitution. In giving laws, they only reformed. Lycurgus,Solon, and the rest, so far from abolishing what usagehad established, endeavoured to preserve every thing whichcould be preserved ;and only added, in part, several newinstitutions, and in part made for the existing ones betterregulations. If we possessed therefore the whole of the lawsof Solon, we should by no means find them to contain aperfect constitution. But to compensate for that, they embraced, not only the rights of individuals, but also morals,in a much higher degree, than the latter can be embracedin the view of any modern lawgiver.The organizationof