denotes much the same with mercy; and implies a remission of severity towards offenders. The term is most generally used in speaking of the forgiveness exercised by princes or persons of high authority. It is the result, indeed, of a disposition which ought to be cultivated by all ranks, though its effects cannot be equally conspicuous or extensive. In praise of clemency joined with power, it is observed, that it is not only the privilege, the honour, and the duty of a prince, but it is also his security, and better than all his garrisons, forts, and guards, to preserve himself and his dominions in safety: That that prince is truly royal, who matters himself; looks upon all injuries as below him; and governs by equity and reason, not by passion or caprice. In illustration of this subject, the following examples are selected out of many recorded in history.

1. Two patricians having conspired against Titus the Roman emperor, were discovered, convicted, and sentenced to death by the senate: but the good-natured prince sent for them, and in private admonished them, that in vain they aspired to the empire, which was given by destiny; exhorting them to be satisfied with the rank in which by Providence they had been placed, and offering them anything else which was in Clemency's power to grant. At the same time he dispatched a messenger to the mother of one of them, who was then at a great distance, and under deep concern about the fate of her son, to assure her, that her son was not only alive, but forgiven.

2. Licinius having raised a numerous army, Zosimus says 130,000 men, endeavoured to wrest the government out of the hands of his brother-in-law Constantine the emperor. But his army being defeated, Licinius fled with what forces he could rally to Nicomedia, whither Constantine pursued him, and immediately invested the place: but on the second day of the siege, the emperor's sister intreating him, with a flood of tears, by the tenderness he had ever shown for her, to forgive her husband, and grant him at least his life, he was prevailed upon to comply with her request; and the next day, Licinius, finding no means of making his escape, presented himself before the conqueror, and throwing himself at his feet, yielded to him the purple and the other ensigns of sovereignty. Constantine received him in a very friendly manner, entertained him at his table, and afterwards sent him to Thessalonica, assuring him, that he should live unmolested so long as he raised no new disturbances.

3. The council of thirty, established at Athens by Lyfander, committed the most execrable cruelties. Upon pretence of restraining the multitude within their duty, and to prevent seditions, they had caused guards to be assigned them, had armed 3000 of the citizens for that purpose, and at the same time disarmed all the rest. The whole city was in the utmost terror and dismay. Whoever opposed their injustice and violence fell a victim to their resentment. Riches were a crime that never failed of drawing a sentence upon their owners, always followed with death and the confiscation of estates; which the thirty tyrants divided amongst themselves. They put more people to death (says Xenophon) in eight months of a peace, than their enemies had done in a war of thirty years. All the citizens of any consideration in Athens, and who retained a love of liberty, quitted a place reduced to so hard and shameful a slavery, and sought elsewhere an asylum and retreat, where they might live in safety. At the head of these was Thrasybulus, a person of extraordinary merit, and who beheld with the most lively affliction the miseries of his country.

The Lacedemonians had the inhumanity to endeavour to deprive those unhappy fugitives of this last resource. They published an edict to prohibit the cities of Greece from giving them refuge, decreed that they should be delivered up to the thirty tyrants, and condemned all such as should contravene the execution of this edict to pay a fine of five talents. Only two cities rejected with disdain so unjust an ordinance, Megara and Thebes; the latter of which made a decree to punish all persons whatsoever that should see an Athenian attacked by his enemies without doing his utmost to assist him. Lyrias, an orator of Syracuse who had been banished by the thirty, raised 500 soldiers at his own expense, and sent them to the aid of the common country of Eloquence. Thrasybulus lost no time. After having taken Phyta, a small fort in Attica, he marched to the Piraeus, of which he made himself master. The thirty flew thither with their troops, Clemency, troops, and a battle ensued. The tyrants were overthrown. Critias, the most savage of them all, was killed on the spot; and as the army was taking to flight, Thrasybulus cried out, "Wherefore do you fly from me as from a victor, rather than assist me as the avenger of your liberty? We are not enemies, but fellow-citizens; nor have we declared war against the city, but against the thirty tyrants." He continued with bidding them to remember, that they had the same origin, country, laws, and religion: he exhorted them to compassionate their exiled brethren, to restore their country to them, and resume their own liberty. This discourse had the desired effect. The army, upon their return to Athens, expelled the thirty, and substituted ten persons to govern in their room, whose conduct proved no better than theirs: but king Pausanias, moved with compassion for the deplorable condition to which a city, once so flourishing, was reduced, had the generosity to favour the Athenians in secret, and at length obtained a peace for them. It was sealed with the blood of the tyrants, who having taken arms to reinstate themselves in the government, were all put to the sword, and left Athens in the full possession of its liberty. All the exiles were recalled. Thrasybulus at that time proposed the celebrated amnesty, by which the citizens engaged upon oath, that all past transactions should be buried in oblivion. The government was re-established upon its ancient foot, the laws were restored to their pristine vigour, and magistrates elected with the usual form.

This (says Rollin) is one of the finest events in ancient history, worthy the Athenian clemency and benevolence, and has served as a model to successive ages in all good governments. Never had tyranny been more cruel and bloody than that the Athenians had lately thrown off. Every house was in mourning, every family bewailed the loss of some relation; it had been a series of public robbery and rapine, in which licence and impunity had authorized all manner of crimes. The people seemed to have a right to demand the blood of all accomplices in such notorious malversations, and even the interest of the state to authorize such a claim, that by exemplary severities such enormous crimes might be prevented for the future. But Thrasybulus rising above these sentiments, from the superiority of his more extensive genius, and the views of a more discerning and profound policy, foreflew, that by giving in to the punishment of the guilty, eternal seeds of discord and enmity would remain, to weaken the public by domestic divisions, when it was necessary to unite against the common enemy, and also occasion the loss to the state of a great number of citizens, who might render it important services from the view of making amends for past misbehaviour.

4. Such conduct, after great troubles in a state, has always seemed, with the ablest politicians, the most certain and ready means to restore the public peace and tranquillity. Cicero, when Rome was divided into two factions upon the occasion of Caesar's death, who had been killed by the conspirators, calling to mind this celebrated amnesty, proposed, after the example of the Athenians, to bury all that had passed in eternal oblivion.

5. Cardinal Mazarine observed to Don Lewis de Haro, prime minister of Spain, that this gentle and humane conduct in France had prevented the troubles and revolts of that kingdom from having any fatal consequences, and "that the king had not lost a foot of land by them to that day;" whereas "the inflexible severity of the Spaniards was the occasion that the subjects of that monarchy, whenever they threw off the mask, never returned to their obedience but by the force of arms; which sufficiently appears (says he) in the example of the Hollanders, who are in the peaceful possession of many provinces, that not an age ago were the patrimony of the king of Spain."

6. Leonidas the Lacedemonian having, with 300 men only, disputed the pass of Thermopylae against the whole army of Xerxes; and being killed in that engagement, Xerxes, by the advice of Mardonius one of his generals, caused his dead body to be hung up on a gallows, making thereby the intended dishonour of his enemy his own immortal shame. But some time after, Xerxes being defeated, and Mardonius slain, one of the principal citizens of Aegina came and addressed himself to Pausanias, desiring him to avenge the indignity that Mardonius and Xerxes had shown to Leonidas, by treating Mardonius's body after the same manner. As a farther motive for doing so, he added, that by thus satisfying the manes of those who were killed at Thermopylae, he would be sure to immortalize his own name throughout all Greece, and make his memory precious to the latest posterity. "Carry thy bale counsels elsewhere (replied Paulanius); thou must have a very wrong notion of true glory to imagine, that the way for me to acquire it is to resemble the barbarians. If the esteem of the people of Aegina is not to be purchased but by such a proceeding, I shall be content with preserving that of the Lacedemonians only, amongst whom the base and ungenerous pleasure of revenge is never put in competition with that of showing clemency and moderation to their enemies, especially after their death. As for the souls of my departed countrymen, they are sufficiently avenged by the death of the many thousand Persians slain upon the spot in the last engagement."