For has not this leviathan of civil power overflowed the earth with a deluge of blood, as if he were made to disport and play therein?
We have shown that political society, on a moderate calculation, has been the means of murdering several times the number of inhabitants now upon the earth, during its short existence, not upwards of four thousand years in any accounts to be depended on.
But we have said nothing of the other, and perhaps as bad, consequence of these wars, which have spilled such seas of blood, and reduced so many millions to a merciless slavery.

But these are only the ceremonies performed in the porch of the political temple.

Much more horrid ones are seen as you enter it.

The several species of government vie with each other in the absurdity of their constitutions, and the oppression which they make their subjects endure.

Take them under what form you please, they are in effect but a despotism, and they fall, both in effect and appearance too, after a very short period, into that cruel and detestable species of tyranny: which I rather call it, because we have been educated under another form, than that this is of worse consequences to mankind.