60 
Benjamin Franklin [1760 
for causes, some of which are in our case impossible, 
and others it is impious to suppose possible. 
The Romans well understood that policy, which 
teaches the security arising to the chief government 
from separate States among the governed, when they 
restored the liberties of the States of Greece (op- 
pressed but united under Macedon) by an edict that 
every State should live under its own laws.* They 
did not even name a governor. Independence of 
each other and separate interests (though among a 
people united by common manners, language, and I 
may say religion; inferior neither in wisdom, brav- 
ery, nor their love of liberty to the Romans them- 
selves) were all the security the sovereigns wished 
for their sovereignty. 
It is true, they did not call themselves sovereigns: 
they set no value on the title; they were contented 
with possessing the thing. And possess it they did, 
even without a standing army. What can be a 
stronger proof of the security of their possession? 
And yet, by a policy similar to this throughout, was 
the Roman world subdued and held, a world com- 
posed of above a hundred languages and sets of man- 
ners, different from those of their masters.” Yet 
1 “Omnes Graecorum civitates, que in Europd, quaque in Asia 
essent, libertatem ac suas leges haberent,” etc.—Liv., lib. xxzxiii., 
cap. 30. 
2 When the Romans had subdued Macedon and Illyricum, they were 
both formed into republics by a decree of the Senate, and Macedon was 
thought safe from the danger of a revolution, by being divided into a 
division common among the Romans, as we learn from the tetrarchs 
in Scripture. ‘Omnium primum liberos esse placebat Macedonas 
atque Illyrios; ut omnibus gentibus appareret, arma populi Romani 
non liberis servitutem, sed contra servientibus libertatem afferre; ut