There are better examples to emulate than those who have only refrained from depraving or tyrannizing over their subjects, because they remembered the fates of Pisistratus[1] and Tarquin. If[2] generosity and virtue should have dominion over your actions, my lessons can hardly be needed; but if the discipline[3] of a narrow education may have extinguished all thirst of genuine excellence, all desire of becoming illustrious for the sake of the illustriousness of the actions which I would incite you to perform. Should you be thus—and no pains have been spared to make you so—make your account with holding your crown on this condition: of deserving it alone. And that this may be evident[4] I will expose to you the state in which the nation will be found at your accession, for the very dead know more than the counsellors by whom you will be surrounded.
The English nation does not, as has been imagined, inherit freedom from its ancestors. Public opinion rather than positive institution maintains it[5] in whatever portion it may now possess, which is[6] in truth the acquirement of their own incessant struggles. As yet the gradations by which this freedom has advanced have been contested step by step.
- ↑ Pisistratus is probably a slip for the sons of Pisistratus.
- ↑ Cancelled reading, But if these motives.
- ↑ Cancelled readings, lessons for discipline; and is to prevent for may have extinguished in the next line.
- ↑ Cancelled reading, evident to you.
- ↑ In the MS. them is struck out in favour of it
- ↑ Cancelled readings, and this has been, and in the same line conquest for acquirement.
