Yet, allowing all this, what defence does this make for artificial society in general, that these inconsiderable spots of the globe have for some short space of time stood as exceptions to a charge so general?
But when we call these governments free, or concede that their citizens were happier than those which lived under different forms, it is merely _ex abundanti_.

For we should be greatly mistaken, if we really thought that the majority of the people which filled these cities enjoyed even that nominal political freedom of which I have spoken so much already.

In reality, they had no part of it.

In Athens there were usually from ten to thirty thousand freemen; this was the utmost.

But the slaves usually amounted to four hundred thousand, and sometimes to a great many more.