LETTER CIII. Usbek to the Same.

TO pursue the subject of my last letter, hear what a sensible European said to me the other day. The worst method the Asiatic princes could take, is to shut themselves up as they do. They think to render themselves more respected: but they make the royalty respected, and not the king; and attach the minds of the subjects to a certain throne and not to a certain person. That invisible power which governs, is always the same to the people. Though ten kings, who are known only by name, have their throats cut one after another, the subjects are sensible of no difference; it is just as if

they had been governed by their spirits. If the detestable parricide of the great king Henry IV. here, had given his blow to one of the Indian kings, master of the royal signet, and of a great treasure which would have seemed to have been heaped up for him, he would quietly have assumed the reins of the empire, without any person’s thinking to inquire after his king, or his family and children. We wonder that there is scarcely ever any change in the governments of the eastern princes: whence comes this, if it is not that they are tyrannical and terrible? Changes cannot be effected but by the prince, or by the people. Now, there, the princes will take care not to make a change, because, being in so high a degree of power, they have all they can have; if they were to make any change, it could not but be to their own prejudice. As to the subjects, if any one of them forms such a design, he cannot execute it upon the state; it would be necessary he should counterbalance immediately a power formidable, and always the only one; he wants time as well as the means: but he has no more than to go to the source of this power; and he wants nothing but an arm and a moment. The murderer mounts the throne, whilst the monarch descends, falls, and expires at his feet. A malecontent, in Europe, thinks of carrying on some private intelligence; to go over to the enemy: to get some strong place into his power; to excite murmurings among the subjects. A malecontent, in Asia, aims directly at the prince, surprises, strikes, and overthrows: he blots out his very memory; in an instant slave and master, in an instant usurper and lawful. Unhappy the king who hath but one head! he seems to collect all his power upon it, only to point out to the first ambitious rebel the part where he may meet with it all together.

Paris, the 17th of the moon of the 2d Rebiab,
1717.