When under the Macedonian and the Roman monarchies, a nation came to be

considered as, the estate of a prince, and the inhabitants of a province to

be regarded as a lucrative property, the possession of territory, not the

destruction of its people, became the object of conquest. The pacific

citizen had little concern in the quarrels of sovereigns; the violence of

the soldier was restrained by discipline. He fought, because he was taught

to carry arms, and to obey: he sometimes shed unnecessary blood in the

ardour of victory; but, except in the case of civil wars, had no passions

to excite his animosity beyond the field and the day of battle. Leaders

judged of the objects of an enterprise, and they arrested the sword when

these were obtained.

In the modern nations of Europe, where extent of territory admits of a

distinction between the state and its subjects, we are accustomed to think

of the individual with compassion, seldom of the public with zeal. We have

improved on the laws of war, and on the lenitives which have been devised

to soften its rigours; we have mingled politeness with the use of the

sword; we have learned to make war under the stipulations of treaties and

cartels, and trust to the faith of an enemy whose ruin we meditate. Glory

is more successfully obtained by saving and protecting, than by destroying

the vanquished: and the most amiable of all objects is, in appearance,

attained; the employing of force, only for the obtaining of justice, and

for the preservation of national rights.

This is, perhaps, the principal characteristic, on which, among modern

nations, we bestow the epithets of _civilized_ or of _polished_.

But we have seen, that it did not accompany the progress of sorts among the

Greeks, nor keep pace with the advancement of policy, literature, and

philosophy. It did not await the returns of learning and politeness among

the moderns; it was found in an early period of our history, and

distinguished, perhaps more than at present; the manners of the ages

otherwise rude and undisciplined. A king of France, prisoner in the hands

of his enemies, was treated, about four hundred years ago, with as much

distinction and courtesy as a crowned head, in the like circumstances,

could possibly expect in this age of politeness. [Footnote: Hume's History

of England.] The prince of Conde, defeated and taken in the battle of

Dreux, slept at night in the same bed with his enemy the duke of

Guise. [Footnote: Davila.]

If the moral of popular traditions, and the taste of fabulous legends,

which are the productions or entertainment of particular ages, are likewise

sure indications of their notions and characters, we may presume, that the

foundation of what is now held to be the law of war, and, of nations, was

laid in the manners of Europe, together with the sentiments which are

expressed in the tales of chivalry, and of gallantry. Our system of war

differs not more from that of the Greeks, than the favourite characters of

our early romance differed from those of the Iliad, and of every ancient

poem. The hero of the Greek fable, endued with superior force, courage, and

address, takes every advantage of an enemy, to kill with safety to himself;

and, actuated by a desire of spoil, or by a principle of revenge, is never

stayed in his progress by interruptions of remorse or compassion. Homer,

who, of all poets, knew best how to exhibit the emotions of a vehement

affection, seldom attempts to excite commiseration. Hector falls unpitied,

and his body is insulted by every Greek.

Our modern fable, or romance, on the contrary, generally couples an object

of pity, weak, oppressed, and defenceless, with an object of admiration,

brave, generous, and victorious; or sends the hero abroad in search of mere

danger, and of occasions to prove his valour. Charged with the maxims of a

refined courtesy, to be observed even towards an enemy; and of a scrupulous

honour, which will not suffer him to take any advantages by artifice or

surprise; indifferent to spoil, he contends only for renown, and employs

his valour to rescue the distressed, and to protect the innocent. If

victorious, he is made to rise above nature as much in his generosity and

gentleness, as in his military prowess and valour.

It may be difficult, upon stating this contrast between the system of

ancient and modern fable, to assign, among nations, equally rude, equally

addicted to war, and equally fond of military glory, the origin of

apprehensions on the point of honour, so different, and so opposite. The

hero of Greek poetry proceeds on the maxims of animosity and hostile

passion. His maxims in war are like those which prevail in the woods of

America. They require him to be brave, but they allow him to practise

against his enemy every sort of deception. The hero of modern romance

professes a contempt of stratagem, as well as of danger, and unites in the

same person, characters and dispositions seemingly opposite; ferocity with

gentleness, and the love of blood with sentiments of tenderness and pity.

The system of chivalry, when completely formed, proceeded on a marvellous

respect and veneration to the fair sex, on forms of combat established, and

on a supposed junction of the heroic and sanctified character. The

formalities of the duel, and a kind of judicial challenge, were known among

the ancient Celtic nations of Europe. [Footnote: Liv., lib. 28. c. 21.] The

Germans, even in their native forests, paid a kind of devotion to the

female sex. The Christian religion enjoined meekness and compassion to

barbarous ages. These different principles combined together, may have

served as the foundation of a system, in which courage was directed by

religion and love, and the warlike and gentle were united together. When

the characters of the hero and the saint were mixed, the mild spirit of

Christianity, though often turned into venom by the bigotry of opposite

parties, though it could not always subdue the ferocity of the warrior, nor

suppress the admiration of courage and force, may have confirmed the

apprehensions of men in what was to be held meritorious and splendid in the

conduct of their quarrels.

In the early and traditionary history of the Greeks and the Romans, rapes

were assigned as the most frequent occasions of war; and the sexes were, no

doubt, at all times, equally important to each other. The enthusiasm of

love is most powerful in the neighbourhood of Asia and Africa; and beauty,

as a possession, was probably more valued by the countrymen of Homer, than

it was by those of Amadis de Gaul, or by the authors of modern gallantry.

"What wonder," says the old Priam, when Helen appeared, "that nations

should contend for the possession of so much beauty?" This beauty, indeed,

was possessed by different lovers; a subject on which the modern hero had

many refinements, and seemed to soar in the clouds. He adored at a

respectful distance, and employed his valour to captivate the admiration,

not to gain the possession of his mistress. A cold and unconquerable

chastity was set up, as an idol to be worshipped, in the toils, the

sufferings, and the combats of the hero and the lover.

The feudal establishments, by the high rank to which they elevated certain

families, no doubt, greatly favoured this romantic system. Not only the

lustre of a noble descent, but the stately castle beset with battlements

and towers, served to inflame the imagination, and to create a veneration

for the daughter and the sister of gallant chiefs, whose point of honour it

was to be inaccessible and chaste, and who could perceive no merit but that

of the high minded and the brave, nor be approached in any other ascents

than those of gentleness and respect.

What was originally singular in these apprehensions, was, by the writer of

romance, turned to extravagance; and under the title of chivalry was

offered as a model of conduct, even in common affairs: the fortunes of

nations were directed by gallantry; and human life, on its greatest

occasions, became a scene of affectation and folly. Warriors went forth to

realize the legends they had studied; princes and leaders of armies

dedicated their most serious exploits to a real or to a fancied mistress.

But whatever was the origin of notions, often so lofty and so ridiculous,

we cannot doubt of their lasting effects on our manners. The point of

honour, the prevalence of gallantry in our conversations, and on our

theatres, many of the opinions which the vulgar apply even to the conduct

of war; their notion, that the leader of an army, being offered battle upon

equal terms, is dishonoured by declining it, are undoubtedly remains of

this antiquated system: and chivalry, uniting with the genius of our

policy, has probably suggested those peculiarities in the law of nations,

by which modern states are distinguished from the ancient. And if our rule

in measuring degrees of politeness and civilization is to be taken from

hence, or from the advancement of commercial arts, we shall be found to

have greatly excelled any of the celebrated nations of antiquity.

AN ESSAY ON THE HISTORY OF CIVIL SOCIETY.

* * * * *

PART FIFTH.

OF THE DECLINE OF NATIONS.

* * * * *

SECTION I.

OF SUPPOSED NATIONAL EMINENCE, AND OF THE VICISSITUDES OF HUMAN AFFAIRS.

No nation is so unfortunate as to think itself inferior to the rest of

mankind: few are even willing to put up with the claim to equality. The

greater part having chosen themselves, as at once, the judges and the

models of what is excellent in their kind, are first in their own opinion,

and give to others consideration or eminence, so far only as they approach

to their own condition. One nation is vain of the personal character, or of

the learning of a few of its members; another, of its policy, its wealth,

its tradesmen, its gardens, and its buildings; and they who have nothing to

boast are vain, because they are ignorant. The Russians, before the reign

of Peter the Great, thought themselves possessed of every national honour,

and held the _Nemei_, or _dumb nations_, the name which they

bestowed on then western neighbours of Europe, in a proportional degree of

contempt. [Footnote: Strahlenberg.] The map of the world, in China, was a

square plate, the greater part of which was occupied by the provinces of

this great empire, leaving on its skirts a few obscure corners, into which

the wretched remainder of mankind were supposed to be driven. "If you have

not the use of our letters, nor the knowledge of our books," said the

learned Chinese to the European missionary, "what literature, or what

science can you have?" [Footnote: Gemelli Carceri.]

The term _polished_, if we may judge from its etymology, originally

referred to the state of nations in respect to their laws and government;

and men civilized were men practised in the duty of citizens. In its later

applications, it refers no less to the proficiency of nations in the

liberal and mechanical arts, in literature, and in commerce; and men

civilized are scholars, men of fashion and traders. But whatever may be its

application, it appears, that if there were a name still more respectable

than this, every nation, even the most barbarous, or the most corrupted,

would assume it; and bestow its reverse where they conceived a dislike, or

apprehended a difference. The names of _alien_ or _foreigner_,

are seldom pronounced without some degree of intended reproach. That of

_barbarian_, in use with one arrogant people, and that of

_gentile_, with another, only served to distinguish the stranger,

whose language and pedigree differed from theirs.

Even where we pretend to found our opinions on reason, and to justify our

preference of one nation to another, we frequently bestow our esteem on

circumstances which do not relate to national character, and which have

little tendency to promote the welfare of mankind. Conquest, or great

extent of territory, however peopled, and great wealth, however distributed

or employed, are titles upon which we indulge our own, and the vanity of

other nations, as we do that of private men on the score of their fortunes

and honours. We even sometimes contend, whose capital is the most

overgrown; whose king has the most absolute power; and at whose court the

bread of the subject is consumed in the most senseless riot. These indeed

are the notions of vulgar minds; but it is impossible to determine, how far

the notions of vulgar minds may lead mankind.

There have certainly, been very few examples of states, who have, by arts

of policy, improved the original dispositions of human nature, or

endeavoured, by wise and effectual precautions, to prevent its corruption.

Affection, and force of mind, which are the band and the strength of

communities, were the inspiration of God, and original attributes in the

nature of man. The wisest policy of nations, except in a few instances, has

tended, we may suspect, rather to maintain the peace of society, and to

repress the external effects of bad passions, than to strengthen the

disposition of the heart itself to justice and goodness. It has tended, by

introducing a variety of arts, to exercise the ingenuity of men, and by

engaging them in a variety of pursuits, inquiries, and studies, to inform,

but frequently to corrupt the mind. It has tended to furnish matter of

distinction and vanity; and by incumbering the individual with new subjects

of personal care, to substitute the anxiety he entertains for a separate

fortune, instead of the confidence and the affection with which he should

unite with his fellow creatures, for their joint preservation.

Whether this suspicion be just or no, we are come to point at circumstances

tending to verify, or to disprove it: and if to understand the real

felicity of nations be of importance, it is certainly so likewise, to know

what are those weaknesses, and those vices, by which men not only mar this

felicity, but in one age forfeit all the external advantages they had

gained in a former.

The wealth, the aggrandizement, and power of nations, are commonly the

effects of virtue; the loss of these advantages is often a consequence of

vice. Were we to suppose men to have succeeded in the discovery and

application of every art by which states are preserved and governed; to

have attained, by efforts of wisdom and magnanimity, the admired

establishments and advantages of a civilized and flourishing people; the

subsequent part of their history, containing, according to vulgar

apprehension, a full display of those fruits in maturity, of which they had

till then carried only the blossom, and the first formation, should, still

more than the former, merit our attention, and excite our admiration.

The event, however, has not corresponded to this expectation. The virtues

of men have shone most during their struggles, not after the attainment of

their ends. Those ends themselves, though attained by virtue, are

frequently the causes of corruption and vice. Mankind, in aspiring to

national felicity, have substituted arts which increase their riches,

instead of those which improve their nature. They have entertained

admiration of themselves, under the titles of _civilized_ and of

_polished_, where they should have been affected with shame; and even

where they have, for a while, acted on maxims tending to raise, to

invigorate, and to preserve the national character, they have, sooner or

later, been diverted from their object, and fallen a prey to misfortune, or

to the neglects which prosperity itself had encouraged.

War, which furnishes mankind with a principal occupation of their restless

spirit, serves, by the variety of its events, to diversify their fortunes.

While it opens to one tribe or society, the way to eminence, and leads to

dominion, it brings another to subjection, and closes the scene of their

national efforts. The celebrated rivalship of Carthage and Rome was, in

both parties, the natural exercise of an ambitious spirit, impatient of

opposition, or even of equality. The conduct and the fortune of leaders

held the balance for some time in suspense; but to which ever side it had

inclined, a great nation was to fall; a seat of empire, and of policy, was

to be removed from its place; and it was then to be determined, whether the

Syriac or the Latin should contain the erudition that was, in future ages,

to occupy the studies of the learned.

States have been thus conquered from abroad, before they gave any signs of

internal decay, even in the midst of prosperity, and in the period of their

greatest ardour for national objects. Athens, in the height of her

ambition, and of her glory, received a fatal wound, in striving to extend

her maritime power beyond the Grecian seas. And nations of every

description, formidable by their rude ferocity, respected for their

discipline and military experience, when advancing, as well as when

declining, in their strength, fell a prey by turns to the ambition and

arrogant spirit of the Romans. Such examples may excite and alarm the

jealousy and caution of states; the presence of similar dangers may

exercise the talents of politicians and statesmen; but mere reverses of

fortune are the common materials of history, and must long since have

ceased to create our surprise.

Did we find, that nations advancing from small beginnings, and arrived at

the possession of arts which lead to dominion, became secure of their

advantages, in proportion as they were qualified to gain them; that they

proceeded in a course of uninterrupted felicity, till they were broke by

external calamities; and that they retained their force, till a more

fortunate or vigorous power arose to depress them; the subject in

speculation could not be attended with many difficulties, nor give rise to

many reflections. But when we observe, among many nations, a kind of

spontaneous return to obscurity and weakness; when, in spite of perpetual

admonitions of the danger they run, they suffer themselves to be subdued,

in one period, by powers which could not have entered into competition with

them in a former, and by forces which they had often baffled and despised,

the subject becomes more curious, and its explanation more difficult.

(The fact itself is known in a variety of different examples. The empire of

Asia was, more than once, transferred from the greater to the inferior

power. The states of Greece, once so warlike, felt a relaxation of their

vigour, and yielded the ascendant they had disputed with the monarchs of

the east, to the forces of an obscure principality, become formidable in a

few years, and raised to eminence under the conduct of a single man. The

Roman empire, which stood alone for ages, which had brought every rival

under subjection, and saw no power from whom a competition could be feared,

sunk at last before an artless and contemptible enemy. Abandoned to inroad,

to pillage, and at last to conquest, on her frontier, she decayed in all

her extremities, and shrunk on every side. Her territory was dismembered,

and whole provinces gave way, like branches fallen down with age, not

violently torn by superior force. The spirit with which Marius had baffled

and repelled the attacks of barbarians in a former age, the civil and

military force with which the consul and his legions had extended this

empire, were now no more. The Roman greatness, doomed to sink as it rose,

by slow degrees, was impaired in every encounter. It was reduced to its

original dimensions, within the compass of a single city; and depending for

its preservation on the fortune of a siege, it was extinguished at a blow;

and the brand, which had filled the world with its flames, sunk like a

taper in the socket.

Such appearances have given rise to a general apprehension, that the

progress of societies to what we call the heights of national greatness, is

not more natural, than their return to weakness and obscurity is necessary

and unavoidable. The images of youth, and of old age, are applied to

nations; and communities, like single men, are supposed to have a period of

life, and a length of thread, which is spun by the fates in one part

uniform and strong, in another weakened and shattered by use; to be cut,

when the destined era is come, and to make way for a renewal of the emblem

in the case of those who arise in succession. Carthage being so much older

than Rome, had felt her decay, says Polybius, so much the sooner; and the

survivor too, he foresaw, carried in her bosom the seeds of mortality.

The image indeed is apposite, and the history of mankind renders the

application familiar. But it must be obvious, that the case of nations, and

that of individuals, are very different. The human frame has a general

course: it has in every individual a frail contexture and limited duration;

it is worn by exercise, and exhausted by a repetition of its functions: but

in a society, whose constituent members are renewed in every generation,

where the race seems to enjoy perpetual youth, and accumulating advantages,

we cannot, by any parity of reason, expect to find imbecilities connected

with mere age and length of days.

The subject is not new, and reflections will crowd upon every reader. The

notions, in the mean time, which we entertain, even in speculation, upon a

subject so important, cannot be entirely fruitless to mankind; and however

little the labours of the speculative may influence the conduct of men, one

of the most pardonable errors a writer can commit, is to believe that he is

about to do a great deal of good. But, leaving the care of effects to

others, we proceed to consider the grounds of inconstancy among mankind,

the sources of internal decay, and the ruinous corruptions to which nations

are liable, in the supposed condition of accomplished civility.

SECTION II.

OF THE TEMPORARY EFFORTS AND RELAXATIONS OF THE NATIONAL SPIRIT.

From what we have already observed on the general characteristics of human

nature, it has appeared that man is not made for repose. In him every

amiable and respectable quality, is an active power, and every subject of

commendation an effort. If his errors and his crimes are the movements of

an active being, his virtues and his happiness consist likewise in the

employment of his mind; and all the lustre which he casts around him, to

captivate or engage the attention of his fellow creatures, like the flame

of a meteor, shines only while his motion continues; the moments of rest

and obscurity are the same. We know, that the tasks assigned him frequently

may exceed, as well as come short of, his powers; that he may be agitated

too much, as well as too little; but cannot ascertain a precise medium

between the situations in which he would be harassed, and those in which he

would fall into languor. We know that he may be employed on a great variety

of subjects, which occupy different passions; and that, in consequence of

habit, he becomes reconciled to very different scenes. All we can determine

in general is, that whatever be the subjects with which he is engaged, the

frame of his nature requires him to be occupied, and his happiness requires

him to be just.

We are now to inquire, why nations cease to be eminent; and why societies

which have drawn the attention of mankind by great examples of magnanimity,

conduct, and national success, should sink from the height of their

honours, and yield, in one age, the palm which they had won in a former.

Many reasons will probably occur. One may be taken from the fickleness and

inconstancy of mankind, who become tired of their pursuits and exertions,

even while the occasions that gave rise to those pursuits; in some measure,

continue; another, from the change of situations, and the removal of

objects which served to excite their spirit.

The public safety, and the relative interests of states; political

establishments, the pretensions of party, commerce, and arts, are subjects

which engage the attention of nations. The advantages gained in some of

these particulars, determine the degree of national prosperity. The ardour

and vigour with which they are at any one time pursued, is the measure of a

national spirit. When those objects cease to animate, nations may be said

to languish; when they are during a considerable time neglected, states

must decline, and their people degenerate.

In the most forward, enterprising, inventive, and industrious nations, this

spirit is fluctuating; and they who continue longest to gain advantages, or

to preserve them, have periods of remissness, as well as of ardour. The

desire of public safety, is, at all times, a powerful motive of conduct;

but it operates most when combined with occasional passions, when

provocations inflame, when successes encourage, or mortifications

exasperate.

A whole people, like the individuals of whom they are composed, act under

the influence of temporary humours, sanguine hopes, or vehement

animosities. They are disposed, at one time, to enter on national struggles

with vehemence; at another, to drop them from mere lassitude and disgust.

In their civil debates and contentions at home, they are occasionally

ardent or remiss. Epidemical passions arise or subside on trivial as well

as important grounds. Parties are ready, at one time, to take their names

and the pretence of their oppositions, from mere caprice or accident; at

another time, they suffer the most serious occasions to pass in silence. If

a vein of literary genius be casually opened, or a new subject of

disquisition be started, real or pretended discoveries suddenly multiply,

and every conversation is inquisitive and animated. If a new source of

wealth be found, or a prospect of conquest be offered, the imaginations of

men are inflamed, and whole quarters of the globe are suddenly engaged in

ruinous or in successful adventures.

Could we recall the spirit that was exerted, or enter into the views that

were entertained, by our ancestors, when they burst, like a deluge, from

their ancient seats, and poured into the Roman empire, we should probably,

after their first success at least, find a ferment in the minds of men, for

which no attempt was too arduous, no difficulties insurmountable.

The subsequent ages of enterprise in Europe, were those in which the alarm

of enthusiasm was rung, and the followers of the cross invaded the east, to

plunder a country, and to recover a sepulchre; those in which the people in

different states contended for freedom, and assaulted the fabric of civil

or religious usurpation; that in which, having found means to cross the

Atlantic, and to double the Cape of Good Hope, the inhabitants of one half

the world were let loose on the other, and parties from every quarter,

wading in blood, and at the expense of every crime, and of every danger,

traversed the earth in search of gold.

Even the weak and the remiss are roused to enterprise, by the contagion of

such remarkable ages; and states, which have not in their form the

principles of a continued exertion, either favourable or adverse to the

welfare of mankind, may have paroxysms of ardour, and a temporary

appearance of national vigour. In the case of such nations, indeed, the

returns of moderation are but a relapse to obscurity, and the presumption

of one age is turned to dejection in that which succeeds.

But in the case of states that are fortunate in, their domestic policy,

even madness itself may, in the result of violent convulsions, subside into

wisdom; and a people return to their ordinary mood, cured of their follies,

and wiser by experience; or, with talents improved, in conducting the very

scenes which frenzy had opened, they may then appear best qualified to

pursue with success the object of nations. Like the ancient republics,

immediately after some alarming sedition, or like the kingdom of Great

Britain, at the close of its civil wars, they retain the spirit of activity

which was recently awakened, and are equally vigorous in every pursuit,

whether of policy, learning, or arts. From having appeared on the brink of

ruin, they pass to the greatest prosperity.)

Men engage in pursuits with degrees of ardour not proportioned to the

importance of their object. When they are stated in opposition, or joined

in confederacy, they only wish for pretences to act. They forget, in the

heat of their animosities, the subject of their controversy; or they seek,

in their formal reasonings concerning it, only a disguise for their

passions. When the heart is inflamed, no consideration can repress its

ardour; when its fervour subsides, no reasoning can excite, and no

eloquence awaken its former emotions.

The continuance of emulation among states must depend on the degree of

equality by which their forces are balanced; or on the incentives by which

either party, or all, are urged to continue their struggles. Long

intermissions of war, suffer, equally in every period of civil society, the

military spirit to languish. (The reduction of Athens by Lysander, struck a

fatal blow at the institutions of Lycurgus; and the quiet possession of

Italy, happily perhaps for mankind, had almost put an end to the military

progress of the Romans. After some years repose, Hannibal found Italy

unprepared for his onset, and the Romans in a disposition likely to drop,

on the banks of the Po, that martial ambition, which being roused by the

sense of a new danger, afterwards, carried them to the Euphrates and the

Rhine.)

States, even distinguished for military prowess, sometimes lay down their

arms from lassitude, and are weary of fruitless contentions; but if they

maintain the station of independent communities, they will have frequent

occasions to recall, and to exert their vigour. Even under popular

governments, men sometimes drop the consideration of their political

rights, and appear at times remiss or supine; but if they have reserved the

power to defend themselves, the intermission of its exercise cannot be of

long duration. Political rights, when neglected, are always invaded; and

alarms from this quarter must frequently come to renew the attention of

parties. The love of learning, and of arts, may change its pursuits, or

droop for a season; but while men are possessed of freedom, and while the

exercises of ingenuity are not superseded, the public may proceed, at

different times, with unequal fervour; but its progress is seldom

altogether discontinued, or the advantages gained in one age are seldom

entirely lost to the following. If we would find the causes of final

corruption, we must examine those revolutions of state that remove, or

withhold, the objects of every ingenious study or liberal pursuit; that

deprive the citizen of occasions to act as the member of a public; that

crush his spirit; that debase his sentiments, and disqualify his mind for

affairs.

SECTION III.

OF RELAXATIONS IN THE NATIONAL SPIRIT INCIDENT TO POLISHED NATIONS.

Improving nations, in the course of their advancement, have to struggle

with foreign enemies, to whom they bear an extreme animosity, and with

whom, in many conflicts, they contend for their existence as a people. In

certain periods, too, they feel in their domestic policy inconveniencies

and grievances, which beget an eager impatience; and they apprehend

reformations and new establishments, from which they have sanguine hopes of

national happiness. In early ages, every art is imperfect, and susceptible

of many improvements. The first principles of every science are yet secrets

to be discovered, and to be successively published with applause and

triumph.

We may fancy to ourselves, that in ages of progress, the human race, like

scouts gone abroad on the discovery of fertile lands, having the world open

before them, are presented at every step with the appearance of novelty.

They enter on every new ground with expectation and joy: they engage in

every enterprise with the ardour of men, who believe they are going to

arrive at national felicity, and permanent glory; and forget past

disappointments amidst the hopes of future success. From mere ignorance,

rude minds are intoxicated with every passion; and, partial to their own

condition, and to their own pursuits, they think that every scene is

inferior to that in which they are placed. Roused alike by success and by

misfortune, they are sanguine, ardent, and precipitant; and leave, to the

more knowing ages which succeed them, monuments of imperfect skill, and of

rude execution of every art; but they leave likewise the marks of a

vigorous and ardent spirit, which their successors are not always qualified

to sustain, or to imitate.

This may be admitted, perhaps, as a fair description of prosperous

societies, at least during certain periods of their progress. The spirit

with which they advance may be unequal in different ages, and may have its

paroxysms and intermissions, arising from the inconstancy of human

passions, and from the casual appearance or removal of occasions that

excite them. But does this spirit, which for a time continues to carry on

the project of civil and commercial arts, find a natural pause in the

termination of its own pursuits? May the business of civil society be

accomplished, and may the occasion of farther exertion be removed? Do

continued disappointments reduce sanguine hopes, and familiarity with

objects blunt the edge of novelty? Does experience itself cool the ardour

of the mind? May the society be again compared to the individual? And may

it be suspected, although the vigour of a nation, like that of a natural

body, does not waste by a physical decay, that yet it may sicken for want

of exercise, and die in the close of its own exertions? May societies, in

the completion of all their designs, like men in years, who disregard the

amusements, and are insensible to the passions of youth, become cold and

indifferent to objects that used to animate in a ruder age? And may a

polished community be compared to a man who, having executed his plan,

built his house, and made his settlement; who having, in short, exhausted

the charms of every subject, and wasted all his ardour, sinks into languor

and listless indifference? If so, we have found at least another simile to

our purpose. But it is probable, that here too the resemblance is

imperfect; and the inference that would follow, like that of most arguments

drawn from analogy, tends rather to amuse the fancy, than to give any real

information on the subject to which it refers.

The materials of human art are never entirely exhausted, and the

applications of industry are never at an end. The national ardour is not,

at any particular time, proportioned to the occasion there is for activity;

nor the curiosity of the learned to the extent of subject that remains to

be studied.

The ignorant and the artless, to whom objects of science are new, and whose

manner of life is most simple, instead of being more active and more

curious, are commonly more quiescent, and less inquisitive, than those who

are best furnished with knowledge and the conveniencies of life. When we

compare the particulars which occupy mankind in the beginning and in the

advanced age of commercial arts, these particulars will be found greatly

multiplied and enlarged in the last. The questions we have put, however,

deserve to be answered; and if, in the result of commerce, we do not find

the objects of human pursuit removed, or greatly diminished, we may find

them at least changed; and in estimating the national spirit, we may find

a negligence in one part, but ill compensated by the growing attention

which is paid to another.

It is true, in general, that in all our pursuits, there is a termination of

trouble, and a point of repose to which we aspire. We would remove this

inconvenience, or gain that advantage, that our labours may cease. When I

have conquered Italy and Sicily, says Pyrrhus, I shall then enjoy my

repose. This termination is proposed in our national, as well as in our

personal exertions; and, in spite of frequent experience to the contrary,

is considered, at a distance, as the height of felicity. But nature has

wisely, in most particulars, baffled our project; and placed no where

within our reach this visionary blessing of absolute ease. The attainment

of one end is but the beginning of a new pursuit; and the discovery of one

art is but a prolongation of the thread by which we are conducted to

further inquiries, and while we hope to escape from the labyrinth, are led

to its most intricate paths.

Among the occupations that may be enumerated, as tending to exercise the

invention, and to cultivate the talents of men, are the pursuits of

accommodation and wealth, including all the different contrivances which

serve to increase manufactures, and to perfect the mechanical arts. But it

must be owned, that as the materials of commerce may continue to be

accumulated without any determinate limit, so the arts which are applied to

improve them, may admit of perpetual refinements. No measure of fortune, or

degree of skill, is found to diminish the supposed necessities of human

life; refinement and plenty foster new desires, while they furnish the

means, or practise the methods, to gratify them.

In the result of commercial arts, inequalities of fortune are greatly

increased, and the majority, of every people are obliged by necessity, or

at least strongly incited by ambition and avarice; to employ every talent

they possess. After a history of some thousand years employed in

manufacture and commerce, the inhabitants of China are still the most

laborious and industrious of any people on earth.

Some part of this observation may be extended to the elegant and literary

arts. They too have their materials which cannot be exhausted, and proceed

from desires which cannot be satiated. But the respect paid to literary

merit is fluctuating, and matter of transient fashion. When learned

productions accumulate, the acquisition of knowledge occupies the time that

might be bestowed on invention. The object of mere learning is attained

with moderate or inferior talents, and the growing list of pretenders

diminishes the lustre of the few who are eminent. When we only mean to

learn what others have taught, it is probable that even our knowledge will

be less than that of our masters. Great names continue to be repeated with

admiration, after we have ceased to examine the foundations of our praise;

and new pretenders are rejected, not because they fall short of their

predecessors, but because they do not excel them; or because in reality we

have, without examination, taken for granted the merit of the first, and

cannot judge of either.

After libraries are furnished, and every path of ingenuity is occupied, we

are, in proportion to our admiration of what is already done, prepossessed

against farther attempts. We become students and admirers, instead of

rivals; and substitute the knowledge of books, instead of the inquisitive

or animated spirit in which they were written.

The commercial and the lucrative arts may continue to prosper, but they

gain an ascendant at the expense of other pursuits. The desire of profit

stifles the love of perfection. Interest cools the imagination, and hardens

the heart; and, recommending employments in proportion as they are

lucrative, and certain in their gains, it drives ingenuity, and ambition

itself, to the counter and the workshop. But, apart from these

considerations, the separation of professions, while it seems to promise

improvement of skill, and is actually the cause why the productions of

every art become more perfect as commerce advances; yet, in its termination

and ultimate effects, serves, in some measure, to break the bands of

society, to substitute mere forms and rules of art in place of ingenuity,

and to withdraw individuals from the common scene of occupation, on which

the sentiments of the heart, and the mind, are most happily employed.

Under the _distinction_ of callings, by which the members of polished

society are separated from each other, every individual is supposed to

possess his species of talent, or his peculiar skill, in which the others

are confessedly ignorant; and society is made to consist of parts, of which

none is animated with the spirit that ought to prevail in the conduct of

nations. "We see in the same persons," said Pericles, "an equal attention

to private and to public affairs; and in men who have turned to separate

professions, a competent knowledge of what relates to the community; for we

alone consider those who are inattentive to the state, as perfectly

insignificant." This encomium on the Athenians was probably offered under

an apprehension, that the contrary was likely to be charged by their

enemies, or might soon take place. It happened, accordingly, that the

business of state, as well as of war, came to be worse administered at

Athens, when these, as well as other applications, became the object of

separate professions; and the history of this people abundantly shewed,

that men ceased to be citizens, even to be good poets and orators, in

proportion as they came to be distinguished by the profession of these, and

other separate crafts.

Animals less honoured than we, have sagacity enough to procure their food,

and to find the means of their solitary pleasures; but it is reserved for

man to consult, to persuade, to oppose, to kindle in the society of his

fellow creatures, and to lose the sense of his personal interest or safety,

in the ardour of his friendships and his oppositions.

When we are involved in any of the divisions into which mankind are

separated under the denominations of a country, a tribe, or an order of men

any way affected by common interests, and guided by communicating passions,

the mind recognises its natural station; the sentiments of the heart, and

the talents of the understanding, find their natural exercise. Wisdom,

vigilance, fidelity, and fortitude, are the characters requisite in such a

scene, and the qualities which it tends to improve.

In simple or barbarous ages, when nations are weak, and beset with enemies,

the love of a country, of a party, or a faction, are the same. The public

is a knot of friends, and its enemies are the rest of mankind. Death, or

slavery, are the ordinary evils which they are concerned to ward off;

victory and dominion, the objects to which they aspire. Under the sense of

what they may suffer from foreign invasions, it is one object, in every

prosperous society, to increase its force, and to extend its limits. In

proportion as this object is gained, security increases. They who possess

the interior districts, remote from the frontier, are unused to alarms from

abroad. They who are placed on the extremities, remote from the seats of

government, are unused to hear of political interests; and the public

becomes an object perhaps too extensive for the conceptions of either. They

enjoy the protection of its laws, or of its armies; and they boast of its

splendour, and its power; but the glowing sentiments of public affection,

which, in small states, mingle with the tenderness of the parent and the

lover, of the friend and the companion, merely by having their object

enlarged, lose great part of their force.

The manners of rude nations require to be reformed. Their foreign quarrels,

and domestic dissentions, are the operations of extreme and sanguinary

passions. A state of greater tranquillity hath many happy effects. But if

nations pursue the plan of enlargement and pacification, till their members

can no longer apprehend the common ties of society, nor be engaged by

affection in the cause of their country, they must err on the opposite

side, and by leaving too little to agitate the spirits of men, bring on

ages of languor, if not of decay.

The members of a community may, in this manner, like the inhabitants of a

conquered province, be made to lose the sense of every connection, but that

of kindred or neighbourhood; and have no common affairs to transact, but

those of trade: connections, indeed, or transactions, in which probity and

friendship may still take place; but in which the national spirit, whose

ebbs and flows we are now considering, cannot be exerted.

What we observe, however, on the tendency of enlargement to loosen the

bands of political union, cannot be applied to nations who, being

originally narrow, never greatly extended their limits; nor to those who,

in a rude state, had already the extension of a great kingdom.

In territories of considerable extent, subject to one government, and

possessed of freedom, the national union, in rude ages, is extremely

imperfect. Every district forms a separate party; and the descendants of

different families are opposed to each other, under the denomination of

tribes or of clans: they are seldom brought to act with a steady concert;

their feuds and animosities give more frequently the appearance of so many

nations at war, than of a people united by connections of policy. They

acquire a spirit, however, in their private divisions, and in the midst of

a disorder, otherwise hurtful, of which the force, on many occasions,

redounds to the power of the state.

Whatever be the national extent, civil order, and regular government, are

advantages of the greatest importance; but it does not follow, that every

arrangement made to obtain these ends, and which may, in the making,

exercise and cultivate the best qualities of men, is therefore of a nature

to produce permanent effects, and to secure the preservation of that

national spirit from which it arose.

We have reason to dread the political refinements of ordinary men, when we

consider that repose, or inaction itself, is in a great measure their

object; and that they would frequently model their governments, not merely

to prevent injustice and error, but to prevent agitation and bustle; and by

the barriers they raise against the evil actions of men, would prevent them

from acting at all. Every dispute of a free people, in the opinion of such

politicians, amounts to disorder, and a breach of the national peace. What

heart burnings? What delay to affairs? What want of secrecy and despatch?

What defect of police? Men of superior genius sometimes seem to imagine,

that the vulgar have no title to act, or to think. A great prince is

pleased to ridicule the precaution by which judges in a free country are

confined to the strict interpretation of law. [Footnote: Memoirs of

Brandenburg.]

We easily learn to contract our opinions of what men may, in consistence

with public order, be safely permitted to do. The agitations of a republic,

and the license of its members, strike the subjects of monarchy with

aversion and disgust. The freedom with which the European is left to

traverse the streets and the fields, would appear to a Chinese a sure

prelude to confusion and anarchy. "Can men behold their superior and not

tremble? Can they converse without a precise and written ceremonial? What

hopes of peace, if, the streets are not barricaded at an hour? What wild

disorder, if men are permitted in any thing to do what they please?"

If the precautions which men thus take against each other, be necessary to

repress their crimes, and do not arise from a corrupt ambition, or from

cruel jealousy in their rulers, the proceeding itself must be applauded, as

the best remedy of which the vices of men will admit. The viper must be

held at a distance, and the tyger chained. But if a rigorous policy,

applied to enslave, not to restrain from crimes, has an actual tendency to

corrupt the manners, and to extinguish the spirit of nations; if its

severities be applied to terminate the agitations of a free people, not to

remedy their corruptions; if forms be often applauded as salutary, because

they tend merely to silence the voice of mankind, or be condemned as

pernicious, because they allow this voice to be heard; we may expect that

many of the boasted improvements of civil society, will be mere devices to

lay the political spirit at rest, and will chain up the active virtues more

than the restless disorders of men.

If to any people it be the avowed object of policy in all its internal

refinements, to secure only the person and the property of the subject,

without any regard to his political character, the constitution indeed may

be free, but its members may likewise become unworthy of the freedom they

possess, and unfit to preserve it. The effects of such a constitution may

be to immerse all orders of men in their separate pursuits of pleasure,

which they may on this supposition enjoy with little disturbance; or of

gain, which they may preserve without any attention to the commonwealth.

If this be the end of political struggles, the design, when executed, in

securing to the individual his estate, and the means of subsistence, may

put an end to the exercise of those very virtues that were required in

conducting its execution. A man who, in concert with his fellow subjects,

contends with usurpation in defence of his estate or his person, may in

that very struggle have found an exertion of great generosity, and of a

vigorous spirit; but he who, under political establishments, supposed to be

fully confirmed, betakes him, because he is safe, to the mere enjoyment of

fortune, has in fact turned to a source of corruption the advantages which

the virtues of the other procured. Individuals, in certain ages, derive

their protection chiefly from the strength of the party to which they

adhere; but in tithes of corruption they flatter themselves; that they may

continue to derive from the public that safety which, in former ages, they

must have owed to their own vigilance and spirit, to the warm attachment of

their friends, and to the exercise of every talent which could render them

respected, feared, or beloved. In one period, therefore, mere circumstances

serve to excite the spirit, and to preserve the manners of men; in another,

great wisdom and zeal for the good of mankind on the part of their leaders,

are required for the same purposes.

Rome, it may be thought, did not die of a lethargy, nor perish by the

remission of her political ardours at home. Her distemper appeared of a

nature more violent and acute. Yet if the virtues of Cato and of Brutus

found an exercise in the dying hour of the republic, the neutrality, and

the cautious retirement of Atticus, found its security in the same

tempestuous season; and the great body of the people lay undisturbed below

the current of a storm, by which the superior ranks of men were destroyed.

In the minds of the people the sense of a public was defaced; and even the

animosity of faction had subsided: they only could share in the commotion,

who were the soldiers of a legion, or the partisans of a leader. But this

state fell not into obscurity for want of eminent men. If at the time of

which we speak, we look only for a few names distinguished in the history

of mankind, there is no period at which the list was more numerous. But

those names became distinguished in the contest for dominion, not in the

exercise of equal rights: the people was corrupted; so great an empire

stood in need of a master.

Republican governments, in general, are in hazard of ruin from the

ascendant of particular factions, and from the mutinous spirit of a

populace, who, being corrupted, are no longer fit to share in the

administration of state. But under other establishments, where liberty may

be more successfully attained if men are corrupted, the national vigour

declines from the abuse of that very security which is procured by the

supposed perfection of public order.

A distribution of power and office; an execution of law, by which mutual

encroachments and molestations are brought to an end; by which the person

and the property are, without friends, without cabal, without obligation,

perfectly secured to individuals, does honour to the genius of a nation;

and could not have been fully established, without those exertions of

understanding and integrity, those trials of a resolute and vigorous

spirit, which adorn the annals of a people, and leave to future ages a

subject of just admiration and applause. But if we suppose that the end is

attained, and that men no longer act, in the enjoyment of liberty from

liberal sentiments, or with a view to the preservation of public manners;

if individuals think themselves secure without any attention or effort of

their own; this boasted advantage may be found only to give them an

opportunity of enjoying, at leisure, the conveniencies and necessaries of

life; or, in the language of Cato, teach them to value their houses, their

villas, their statues, and their pictures, at a higher rate than they do

the republic. They may be found to grow tired in secret of a free

constitution, of which they never cease to boast in their conversation, and

which they always neglect in their conduct.

The dangers to liberty are not the subject of our present consideration;

but they can never be greater from any cause than they are from the

supposed remissness of a people, to whose personal vigour every

constitution, as it owed its establishment, so must continue to owe its

preservation. Nor is this blessing ever less secure than it is in the

possession of men who think that they enjoy it in safety, and who therefore

consider the public only as it presents to their avarice a number of

lucrative employments; for the sake of which, they may sacrifice those very

rights which render themselves objects of management or of consideration.

From the tendency of these reflections, then, it should appear, that a

national spirit is frequently transient, not on account of any incurable

distemper in the nature of mankind, but on account of their voluntary

neglects and corruptions. This spirit subsisted solely, perhaps, in the

execution of a few projects, entered into for the acquisition of territory

or wealth; it comes, like a useless weapon, to be laid aside after its end

is attained.

Ordinary establishments terminate in a relaxation of vigour, and are

ineffectual to the preservation of states; because they lead mankind to

rely on their arts, instead of their virtues; and to mistake for an

improvement of human nature, a mere accession of accommodation, or of

riches. [Footnote:

Adeo in quae laboramus sola crevimus

Divitias luxuriamque.

Liv. lib. vii. c. 25.] Institutions that fortify the mind, inspire courage,

and promote national felicity, can never tend to national ruin.

Is it not possible, amidst our admiration of arts, to find some place for

these? Let statesmen, who are intrusted with the government of nations,

reply for themselves. It is their business to shew, whether they climb into

stations of eminence, merely to display a passion of interest, which they

had better indulge in obscurity; and whether they have capacity to

understand the happiness of a people, the conduct of whose affairs they are

so willing to undertake.

SECTION IV.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

Men frequently, while they are engaged in what is accounted the most

selfish of all pursuits, the improvement of fortune, then most neglect

themselves; and while they reason for their country, forget the

considerations that most deserve their attention. Numbers, riches, and the

other resources of war, are highly important: but nations consist of men;

and a nation consisting of degenerate and cowardly men, is weak; a nation

consisting of vigorous, public spirited, and resolute men, is strong. The

resources of war, where other advantages are equal, may decide a contest;

but the resources of war, in hands that cannot employ them, are of no

avail.

Virtue is a necessary constituent of national strength: capacity, and a

vigorous understanding, are no less necessary to sustain the fortune of

states. Both are improved by discipline, and by the exercises in which men

are engaged. We despise, or we pity the lot of mankind, while they lived

under uncertain establishments, and were obliged to sustain in the same

person, the character of the senator, the statesman, and the soldier.

Commercial nations discover, that any one of these characters is sufficient

in one person; and that the ends of each, when disjoined, are more easily

accomplished. The first, however, were circumstances under which nations

advanced and prospered; the second were those in which the spirit relaxed,

and the nation went to decay.

We may, with good reason, congratulate our species on their having escaped

from a state of barbarous disorder and violence, into a state of domestic

peace and regular policy; when they have sheathed the dagger, and disarmed

the animosities of civil contention; when the weapons with which they

contend are the reasonings of the wise, and the tongue of the eloquent. But

we cannot, mean time, help to regret, that they should ever proceed, in

search of perfection, to place every branch of administration behind the

counter, and come to employ, instead of the statesman and warrior, the mere

clerk and accountant.

By carrying this system to its height, men are educated, who could copy for

Caesar his military instructions, or even execute a part of his plans; but

none who could act in all the different scenes for which the leader himself

must be qualified, in the state and in the field, in times of order or of

tumult, in times of division or of unanimity; none who could animate the

council when deliberating on domestic affairs, or when alarmed by attacks

from abroad.

The policy of China is the most perfect model of an arrangement at which

the ordinary refinements of government are aimed; and the inhabitants of

that empire possess, in the highest degree, those arts on which vulgar

minds make the felicity and greatness of nations to depend. The state has

acquired, in a measure unequalled in the history of mankind, numbers of

men, and the other resources of war. They have done what we are very apt to

admire: they have brought national affairs to the level of the meanest

capacity; they have broke them into parts, and thrown them into separate

departments; they have clothed every proceeding with splendid ceremonies,

and majestical forms; and where the reverence of forms cannot repress

disorder, a rigorous and severe police, armed with every species of

corporal punishment, is applied to the purpose. The whip, and the cudgel,

are held up to all orders of men; they are at once employed, and they are

dreaded, by every magistrate. A mandarine is whipped, for having ordered a

pickpocket to receive too few or too many blows.

Every department of state is made the object of a separate profession, and

every candidate for office must have passed through a regular education;

and, as in the graduations of the university, must have obtained by his

proficiency, or his standing, the degree to which he aspires. The tribunals

of state, of war, and of the revenue, as well as of literature, are

conducted by graduates in their different studies; but while learning is

the great road to preferment, it terminates in being able to read, and to

write; and the great object of government consists in raising, and in

consuming the fruits of the earth. With all these resources, and this

learned preparation, which is made to turn these resources to use, the

state is in reality weak; has repeatedly given the example which we seek to

explain; and among the doctors of war or of policy, among the millions who

are set apart for the military profession, can find none of its members who

are fit to stand forth in the dangers of their country, or to form a

defence against the repeated inroads of an enemy reputed to be artless and

mean.

It is difficult to tell how long the decay of states might be suspended, by

the cultivation of arts on which their real felicity and strength depend;

by cultivating in the higher ranks those talents for the council and the

field, which cannot, without great disadvantage, be separated; and in the

body of a people, that zeal for their country, and that military character,

which enable them to take a share in defending its rights.

Times may come, when every proprietor must defend his own possessions, and

every free people maintain their own independence. We may imagine, that,

against such an extremity, an army of hired troops is a sufficient

precaution; but their own troops are the very enemy against which a people

is sometimes obliged to fight. We may flatter ourselves, that extremities

of this sort, in any particular case, are remote; but we cannot, in

reasoning on the general fortunes of mankind, avoid putting the case, and

referring to the examples in which it has happened. It has happened in

every instance where the polished have fallen a prey to the rude, and where

the pacific inhabitant has been reduced to subjection by military force.

If the defence and government of a people be made to depend on a few, who

make the conduct of state or of war their profession; whether these be

foreigners or natives; whether they be called away of a sudden, like the

Roman legion from Britain; whether they turn against their employers, like

the army of Carthage; or be overpowered and dispersed by a stroke of

fortune; the multitude of a cowardly and undisciplined people must, upon

such an emergence; receive a foreign or a domestic enemy, as they would a

plague or an earthquake, with hopeless amazement and terror, and by their

numbers, only swell the triumphs, and enrich the spoil of a conqueror.

Statesmen and leaders of armies, accustomed to the mere observance of

forms, are disconcerted by a suspension of customary rules; and on slight

grounds despair of their country. They were qualified only to go the rounds

of a particular track; and when forced from their stations, are in reality

unable to act with men. They only took part in formalities, of which they

understood not the tendency; and together with the modes of procedure, even

the very state itself, in their apprehension, has ceased to exist. The

numbers, possessions, and resources of a great people, only serve, in their

view, to constitute a scene of hopeless confusion and terror.

In rude ages, under the appellations of _a community, a people_, or

_a nation_, was understood a number of men; and the state, while its

members remained, was accounted entire. The Scythians, while they fled

before Darius, mocked at his childish attempt; Athens survived the

devastations of Xerxes; and Rome, in its rude state, those of the Gauls.

With polished and mercantile states, the case is sometimes reversed. The

nation is a territory, cultivated and improved by its owners; destroy the

possession, even while the master remains, the state is undone.

The weakness and effeminacy of which polished nations are sometimes

accused, has its place probably in the mind alone. The strength of animals,

and that of man in particular, depends on his feeding; and the kind of

labour to which he is used. Wholesome food, and hard labour, the portion of

many in every polished and commercial nation, secure to the public a number

of men endued with bodily strength, and inured to hardship and toil.

Even delicate living, and good accommodation, are not found to enervate the

body. The armies of Europe have been obliged to make the experiment; and

the children of opulent families, bred in effeminacy, or nursed with tender

care, have been made to contend with the savage. By imitating his arts,

they have learned, like him, to traverse the forest; and, in every season,

to subsist in the desert. They have, perhaps, recovered a lesson, which it

has cost civilized nations many ages to unlearn, that the fortune of a man

is entire while he remains possessed of himself.

It may be thought, however, that few of the celebrated nations of

antiquity, whose fate has given rise to so much reflection on the

vicissitudes of human affairs, had made any great progress in those

enervating arts we have mentioned; or made those arrangements from which

the danger in question could be supposed to arise. The Greeks, in

particular, at the time they received the Macedonian yoke, had certainly

not carried the commercial arts to so great a height as is common with the

most flourishing and prosperous nations of Europe. They had still retained

the form of independent republics; the people were generally admitted to a

share in the government; and not being able to hire armies, they were

obliged, by necessity, to bear a part in the defence of their country. By

their frequent wars and domestic commotions, they were accustomed to

danger, and were familiar with alarming situations; they were accordingly

still accounted the best soldiers and the best statesmen of the known

world. The younger Cyrus promised himself the empire of Asia by means of

their aid; and after his fall, a body of ten thousand, although bereft of

their leaders, baffled, in their retreat, all the military force of the

Persian empire. The victor of Asia did not think himself prepared for that

conquest, till he had formed an army from the subdued republics of Greece.

It is, however, true, that in the age of Philip, the military and political

spirit of those nations appears to have been considerably impaired, and to

have suffered, perhaps, from the variety of interests and pursuits, as well

as of pleasures, with which their members came to be occupied; they even

made a kind of separation between the civil and military character.

Phocion, we are told by Plutarch, having observed that the leading men of

his time followed different courses, that some applied themselves to civil,

others to military affairs, determined rather to follow the examples of

Themistocles, Aristides, and Pericles, the leaders of a former age, who

were equally prepared for either.

We find in the orations of Demosthenes, a perpetual reference to this state

of manners. We find him exhorting the Athenians not only to declare war,

but to arm themselves for the execution of their own military plans. We

find that there was an order of military men, who easily passed from the

service of one state to that of another; and who, when they were neglected

from home, turned away to enterprises on their own account. There were not,

perhaps, better warriors in any former age; but those warriors were not

attached to any state; and the settled inhabitants of every city thought

themselves disqualified for military service. The discipline of armies was

perhaps improved; but the vigour of nations was gone to decay. When Philip,

or Alexander, defeated the Grecian armies, which were chiefly composed of

soldiers of fortune, they found an easy conquest with the other

inhabitants; and when the latter, afterwards supported by those soldiers,

invaded the Persian empire, he seems to have left little martial spirit

behind him; and by removing the military men, to have taken precaution

enough, in his absence, to secure his dominion over this mutinous and

refractory people.

The subdivision of arts and professions, in, certain examples, tends to

improve the practice of them, and to promote their ends. By having

separated the arts of the clothier and the tanner, we are the better

supplied with shoes and with cloth. But to separate the arts which form the

citizen and the statesman, the arts of policy and war, is an attempt to

dismember the human character, and to destroy those very arts we mean to

improve. By this separation, we in effect deprive a free people of what is

necessary to their safety; or we prepare a defence against invasions from

abroad, which gives a prospect of usurpation, and threatens the

establishment of military government at home.

We may be surprised to find the beginning of certain military instructions

at Rome, referred to a time no earlier than that of the Cimbric war. It was

then, we are told by Valerius Maximus, that Roman soldiers were made to

learn from gladiators the use of a sword: and the antagonists of Pyrrhus

and of Hannibal were, by the account of this writer, still in need of

instruction in the first rudiments of their trade. They had already, by the

order and choice of their encampments, impressed the Grecian invader with

awe and respect; they had already, not by their victories, but by their

national vigour and firmness, under repeated defeats, induced him to sue

for peace. But the haughty Roman, perhaps, knew the advantage of order and

of union, without having been broke to the inferior arts of the mercenary

soldier; and had the courage to face the enemies of his country, without

having practised the use of his weapon under the fear of being whipped. He

could ill be persuaded that a time might come, when refined and intelligent

nations would make the art of war to consist in a few technical forms; that

citizens and soldiers might come to be distinguished as much as women and

men; that the citizen would become possessed of a property which he would

not be able, or required, to defend; that the soldier would be appointed to

keep for another what he would be taught to desire, and what he alone would

be enabled to seize and to keep for himself; that, in short, one set of men

were to have an interest in the preservation of civil establishments,

without the power to defend them; that the other were to have this power,

without either the inclination or the interest.

This people, however, by degrees came to put their military force on the

very footing to which this description alludes. Marius made a capital

change in the manner of levying soldiers at Rome: he filled his legions

with the mean and the indigent, who depended on military pay for

subsistence; he created a force which rested on mere discipline alone, and

the skill of the gladiator; he taught his troops to employ their swords

against the constitution of their country, and set the example of a

practice which was soon adopted and improved by his successors.

The Romans only meant by their armies to encroach on the freedom of other

nations, while they preserved their own. They forgot, that in assembling

soldiers of fortune, and in suffering any leader to be master of a

disciplined army, they actually resigned their political rights, and

suffered a master to arise for the state. This people, in short, whose

ruling passion was depredation and conquest, perished by the recoil of an

engine which they themselves had erected against mankind.

The boasted refinements, then, of the polished age, are not divested of

danger. They open a door, perhaps, to disaster, as wide and accessible as

any of those they have shut. If they build walls and ramparts, they

enervate the minds of those who are placed to defend them; if they form

disciplined armies, they reduce the military spirit of entire nations; and

by placing the sword where they have given a distaste to civil

establishments, they prepare for mankind the government of force.

It is happy for the nations of Europe, that the disparity between the

soldier and the pacific citizen can never be so great as it became among

the Greeks and the Romans. In the use of modern arms, the novice is made to

learn, and to practise with ease, all that the veteran knows; and if to

teach him were a matter of real difficulty, happy are they who are not

deterred by such difficulties, and who can discover the arts which tend to

fortify and preserve, not to enervate and ruin their country.

SECTION V.

OF NATIONAL WASTE.

The strength of nations consists in the wealth, the numbers, and the

character of their people. The history of their progress from a state of

rudeness, is, for the most part, a detail of the struggles they have

maintained, and of the arts they have practised, to strengthen, or to

secure themselves. Their conquests, their population, and their commerce,

their civil and military arrangements, their skill in the construction of

weapons, and in the methods of attack and defence; the very distribution of

tasks, whether in private business or in public affairs, either tend to

bestow, or promise to employ with advantage the constituents of a national

force, and the resources of war.

If we suppose that, together with these advantages, the military character

of a people remains, or is improved, it must follow, that what is gained in

civilization, is a real increase of strength; and that the ruin of nations

could never take its rise from themselves. Where states have stopped short

in their progress, or have actually gone to decay, we may suspect, that

however disposed to advance, they have found a limit, beyond which they

could not proceed; or from a remission of the national spirit, and a

weakness of character, were unable to make the most of their resources, and

natural advantages. On this supposition, from being stationary, they may

begin to relapse, and by a retrograde motion in a succession of ages,

arrive at a state of greater weakness, than that which they quitted in the

beginning of their progress; and with the appearance of better arts, and

superior conduct, expose themselves to become a prey to barbarians, whom,

in the attainment, or the height of their glory, they had easily baffled or

despised.

Whatever may be the natural wealth of a people, or whatever may be the

limits beyond which they cannot improve on their stock, it is probable,

that no nation has ever reached those limits, or has been able to postpone

its misfortunes, and the effects of misconduct, until its fund of

materials, and the fertility of its soil, were exhausted, or the numbers of

its people were greatly reduced. The same errors in policy, and weakness of

manners, which prevent the proper use of resources, likewise check their

increase, or improvement. The wealth of the state consists in the fortune

of its members. The actual revenue of the state is that share of every

private fortune, which the public has been accustomed to demand for

national purposes. This revenue cannot be always proportioned to what may

be supposed redundant in the private estate, but to what is, in some

measure, thought so by the owner; and to what he may be made to spare,

without intrenching on his manner of living, and without suspending his

projects of expense, or of commerce. It should appear, therefore, that any

immoderate increase of private expense is a prelude to national weakness:

government, even while each of its subjects consumes a princely estate, may

be straitened in point of revenue, and the paradox be explained by example,

that the public is poor while its members are rich.

We are frequently led into error by mistaking money for riches; we think

that a people cannot be impoverished by a waste of money which is spent

among themselves. The fact is, that men are impoverished only in two ways;

either by having their gains suspended, or by having their substance

consumed; and money expended at home, being circulated, and not consumed,

cannot, any more than the exchange of a tally, or a counter, among a

certain number of hands, tend to diminish the wealth of the company among

whom it is handed about. But while money circulates at home, the

necessaries of life, which are the real constituents of wealth, may be idly

consumed; the industry which might be employed to increase the stock of a

people, may be suspended, or turned to abuse.

Great armies, maintained either at home or abroad, without any national

object, are so many mouths unnecessarily opened to waste the stores of the

public, and so many hands withheld from the arts by which its profits are

made. Unsuccessful enterprises are so many ventures thrown away, and losses

sustained, proportioned to the capital employed in the service. The

Helvetii, in order to invade the Roman province of Gaul, burnt their

habitations, dropt their instruments of husbandry, and consumed in one year

the savings of many. The enterprise failed of success, and the nation was

undone.

States have endeavoured, in some instances, by pawning their credit,

instead of employing their capital, to disguise the hazards they ran. They

have found, in the loans they raised, a casual resource, which encouraged

their enterprises. They have seemed, by their manner of erecting

transferable funds, to leave the capital for purposes of trade, in the

hands of the subject, while it is actually expended by the government. They

have, by these means, proceeded to the execution of great national

projects, without suspending private industry, and have left future ages to

answer, in part, for debts contracted with a view to future emolument. So

far the expedient is plausible, and appears to be just. The growing burden

too, is thus gradually laid; and if a nation be to sink in some future age,

every minister hopes it may still keep afloat in his own. But the measure,

for this very reason, is, with all its advantages, extremely dangerous, in

the hands of a precipitant and ambitious administration, regarding only the

present occasion, and imagining a state to be inexhaustible, while a

capital can be borrowed, and the interest be paid.

We are told of a nation who, during a certain period, rivalled the glories

of the ancient world, threw off the dominion of a master armed against them

with the powers of a great kingdom, broke the yoke with which they had been

oppressed, and almost within the course of a century raised, by their

industry and national vigour, a new and formidable power, which struck the

former potentates of Europe with awe and suspense, and turned the badges of

poverty with which they set out, into the ensigns of war and dominion. This

end was attained by the great efforts of a spirit awakened by oppression,

by a successful pursuit of national wealth, and by a rapid anticipation of

future revenue. But this illustrious state is supposed not only, in the

language of a former section, to have pre-occupied the business; they have

sequestered the inheritance of many ages to come.

Great national expense, however, does not imply the necessity of any

national suffering. While revenue is applied with success to obtain some

valuable end, the profits of every adventure, being more than sufficient to

repay its costs, the public should gain, and its resources should continue

to multiply. But an expense, whether sustained at home or abroad, whether a

waste of the present, or an anticipation of future, revenue, if it bring no

proper return, is to be reckoned among the causes of national ruin.

AN ESSAY ON THE HISTORY OF CIVIL SOCIETY

* * * * *

PART SIXTH

OF CORRUPTION AND POLITICAL SLAVERY.

* * * * *

SECTION I.

OF CORRUPTION IN GENERAL.

If the fortune of nations, and their tendency to aggrandizement, or to

ruin, were to be estimated by merely balancing, on the principles of the

last section, articles of profit and loss, every argument in politics would

rest on a comparison of national expense with national gain; on a

comparison of the numbers who consume, with those who produce or amass the

necessaries of life. The columns of the industrious, and the idle, would

include all orders of men; and the state itself, being allowed as many

magistrates, politicians, and warriors, as were barely sufficient for its

defence and its government, should place, on the side of its loss, every

name that is supernumerary on the civil or the military list; all those

orders of men, who, by the possession of fortune, subsist on the gains of

others, and by the nicety of their choice, require a great expense of time

and of labour, to supply their consumption; all those who are idly employed

in the train of persons of rank; all those who are engaged in the

professions of law, physic, or divinity, together with all the learned who

do not, by their studies, promote or improve the practice of some lucrative

trade. The value of every person, in short, should be computed from his

labour; and that of labour itself, from its tendency to procure and amass

the means of subsistence. The arts employed on mere superfluities should be

prohibited, except when their produce could be exchanged with foreign

nations, for commodities that might be employed to maintain useful men for

the public.

These appear to be the rules by which a miser would examine the state of

his own affairs, or those of his country; but schemes of perfect corruption

are at least as impracticable as schemes of perfect virtue. Men are not

universally misers; they will not be satisfied with the pleasure of

hoarding; they must be suffered to enjoy their wealth, in order that they

may take the trouble of becoming rich. Property, in the common course of

human affairs, is unequally divided: we are therefore obliged to suffer the

wealthy to squander, that the poor may subsist: we are obliged to tolerate

certain orders of men, who are above the necessity of labour, in order

that, in their condition, there may be an object of ambition, and a rank to

which the busy aspire. We are not only obliged to admit numbers, who, in

strict economy, may be reckoned superfluous, on the civil, the military,

and the political list; but because we are men, and prefer the occupation,

improvement, and felicity of our nature, to its mere existence, we must

even wish, that as many members as possible, of every community, may be

admitted to a share of its defence and its government.

Men, in fact, while they pursue in society different objects, or separate

views, procure a wide distribution of power, and by a species of chance,

arrive at a posture for civil engagements, more favourable to human nature

than what human wisdom could ever calmly devise.

If the strength of a nation, in the mean-time, consists in the men on whom

it may rely, and who are fortunately or wisely combined for its

preservation, it follows, that manners are as important as either numbers

or wealth; and that corruption is to be accounted a principal cause of the

national declension and ruin.

Whoever perceives what are the qualities of man in his excellence, may

easily, by that standard, distinguish his defects or corruptions. If an

intelligent, a courageous, and an affectionate mind, constitutes the

perfection of his nature, remarkable failings in any of those particulars

must proportionally sink or debase his character.

We have observed, that it is the happiness of the individual to make a

right choice of his conduct; that this choice will lead him to lose in

society the sense of a personal interest; and, in the consideration of what

is due to the whole, to stifle those anxieties which relate to himself as a

part.

The natural disposition of man to humanity, and the warmth of his temper,

may raise his character to this fortunate pitch. His elevation, in a great

measure, depends on the form of his society; but he can, without incurring

the charge of corruption, accommodate himself to great variations in the

constitutions of government. The same integrity, and vigorous spirit,

which, in democratical states, renders him tenacious of his equality, may,

under aristocracy or monarchy, lead him to maintain the subordinations

established. He may entertain, towards the different ranks of men with whom

he is yoked in the state, maxims of respect and of candour: he may, in the

choice of his actions, follow a principle of justice and of honour, which

the considerations of safety, preferment, or profit, cannot efface.

From our complaints of national depravity, it should, notwithstanding,

appear, that whole bodies of men are sometimes infected with an epidemical

weakness of the head, or corruption of heart, by which they become unfit

for the stations they occupy, and threaten the states they compose, however

flourishing, with a prospect of decay, and of ruin.

A change of national manners for the worse, may arise from a discontinuance

of the scenes in which the talents of men were happily cultivated, and

brought into exercise; or from a change in the prevailing opinions relating

to the constituents of honour or of happiness. When mere riches, or court

favour, are supposed to constitute rank; the mind is misled from the

consideration of qualities on which it ought to rely. Magnanimity, courage,

and the love of mankind, are sacrificed to avarice and vanity; or

suppressed under a sense of dependence. The individual considers his

community so far only as it can be rendered subservient to his personal

advancement or profit: he states himself in competition with his fellow

creatures; and, urged by the passions of emulation, of fear and jealousy,

of envy and malice, he follows the maxims of an animal destined to preserve

his separate existence, and to indulge his caprice or his appetite, at the

expense of his species.

On this corrupt foundation, men become either rapacious, deceitful, and

violent, ready to trespass on the rights of others; or servile, mercenary,

and base, prepared to relinquish their own. Talents, capacity, and force of

mind, possessed by a person of the first description, serve to plunge him

the deeper in misery, and to sharpen the agony of cruel passions; which

lead him to wreak on his fellow creatures the torments that prey on

himself. To a person of the second, imagination, and reason itself, only

serve to point out false objects of fear and desire, and to multiply the

subjects of disappointment and of momentary joy. In either case, and

whether we suppose that corrupt men are urged by covetousness, or betrayed

by fear, and without specifying the crimes which from either disposition

they are prepared to commit, we may safely affirm, with Socrates, "That

every master should pray he may not meet with such a slave; and every such

person, being unfit for liberty, should implore that he may meet with a

merciful master."

Man, under this measure of corruption, although he may be bought for a

slave by those who know how to turn his faculties and his labour to profit;

and although, when kept under proper restraints, his neighbourhood may be

convenient or useful; yet is certainly unfit to act on the footing of a

liberal combination or concert with his fellow creatures: his mind is not

addicted to friendship or confidence; he is not willing to act for the

preservation of others, nor deserves that any other should hazard his own

safety for his.

The actual character of mankind, mean time, in the worst as well as the

best condition, is undoubtedly mixed: and nations of the best description

are greatly obliged for their preservation, not only to the good

disposition of their members, but likewise to those political institutions,

by which the violent are restrained from the commission of crimes, and the

cowardly, or the selfish, are made to contribute their part to the public

defence or prosperity. By means of such institutions, and the wise

precautions of government, nations are enabled to subsist, and even to

prosper, under very different degrees of corruption, or of public

integrity.

So long as the majority of a people are supposed to act on maxims of

probity, the example of the good, and even the caution of the bad, give a

general appearance of integrity, and of innocence. Where men are to one

another objects of affection and of confidence, where they are generally

disposed not to offend, government may be remiss; and every person may be

treated as innocent, till he is found to be guilty. As the subject, in this

case, does not hear of the crimes, so he need not be told of the

punishments inflicted on persons of a different character. But where the

manners of a people are considerably changed for the worse, every subject

must stand on his guard, and government itself must act on suitable maxims

of fear and distrust. The individual, no longer fit to be indulged in his

pretensions to personal consideration, independence, or freedom, each of

which he would turn to abuse, must be taught, by external force, and from

motives of fear, to counterfeit those effects of innocence, and of duty, to

which he is not disposed: he must be referred to the whip, or the gibbet,

for arguments in support of a caution, which the state now requires him to

assume, on a supposition that he is insensible to the motives which

recommend the practice of virtue.

The rules of despotism are made for the government of corrupted men. They

were indeed followed on some remarkable occasions, even under the Roman

commonwealth; and the bloody axe, to terrify the citizen from his crimes,

and to repel the casual and temporary irruptions of vice, was repeatedly

committed to the arbitrary will of the dictator. They were finally

established on the ruins of the republic itself, when either the people

became too corrupted for freedom, or when the magistrate became too

corrupted to resign his dictatorial power. This species of government comes

naturally in the termination of a continued and growing corruption; but

has, no doubt, in some instances, come too soon, and has sacrificed remains

of virtue, that deserved a better fate, to the jealousy of tyrants, who

were in haste to augment their power. This method of government cannot, in

such cases, fail to introduce that measure of corruption, against whose

external effects it is desired as a remedy. When fear is suggested as the

only motive to duty, every art becomes rapacious or base. And this

medicine, if applied to a healthy body, is sure to create the distemper;

which in other cases it is destined to cure.

This is the manner of government into which the covetous, and the arrogant,

to satiate their unhappy desires, would hurry their fellow creatures: it is

a manner of government to which the timorous and the servile submit at

discretion; and when these characters of the rapacious and the timid divide

mankind, even the virtues of Antoninus or Trajan can do no more than apply,

with candour and with vigour, the whip and the sword; and endeavour, by the

hopes of reward, or the fear of punishment, to find a speedy and a

temporary cure for the crimes, or the imbecilities of men.

Other states may be more or less corrupted: this has corruption for its

basis. Here justice may sometimes direct the arm of the despotical

sovereign; but the name of justice is most commonly employed to signify the

interest or the caprice of a reigning power. Human society, susceptible of

such a variety of forms, here finds the simplest of all. The toils and

possessions of many are destined to assuage the passions of one or a few;

and the only parties that remain among, mankind, are the oppressor who

demands, and the oppressed who dare not refuse.

Nations, while they were entitled to a milder fate, as in the case of the

Greeks, repeatedly conquered, have been reduced to this condition by

military force. They have reached it too in the maturity of their own

depravations; when, like the Romans, returned from the conquest, and loaded

with the spoils of the world, they give loose to faction, and to crimes too

bold and too frequent for the correction of ordinary government; and when

the sword of justice, dropping with blood, and perpetually required to

suppress accumulating disorders on every side, could no longer await the

delays and precautions of an administration fettered by laws. [Footnote:

Sallust. Bell. Catalinarium.]

It is, however, well known from the history of mankind, that corruption of

this, or of any other degree, is not peculiar to nations in their decline,

or in the result of signal prosperity, and great advances in the arts of

commerce. The bands of society, indeed, in small and infant establishments,

are generally strong; and their subjects, either by an ardent devotion to

to their own tribe, or a vehement animosity against enemies, and by a

vigorous courage founded on both, are well qualified to urge, or to

sustain, the fortune of a growing community. But the savage and the

barbarian have given, notwithstanding, in the case of entire nations, some

examples of a weak and timorous character. [Footnote: The barbarous nations

of Siberia, in general, are servile and timid.] They have, in more

instances, fallen into that species of corruption which we have already

described in treating of barbarous nations; they have made rapine their

trade, not merely as a species of warfare, or with a view to enrich their

community, but to possess, in property, what they learned to prefer even to

the ties of affection or of blood.

In the lowest state of commercial arts, the passions for wealth, and for

dominion, have exhibited scenes of oppression or servility, which the most

finished corruption of the arrogant, the cowardly, and the mercenary,

founded on the desire of procuring, or the fear of losing, a fortune, could

not exceed. In such cases, the vices of men, unrestrained by forms, and

unawed by police, are suffered to riot at large, and to produce their

entire effects. Parties accordingly unite, or separate, on the maxims of a

gang of robbers; they sacrifice to interest the tenderest affections of

human nature. The parent supplies the market for slaves, even by the sale

of his own children; the cottage ceases to be a sanctuary for the weak and

the defenceless stranger; and the rights of hospitality, often so sacred

among nations in their primitive state, come to be violated, like every

other tie of humanity, without fear or remorse. [Footnote: Chardin's

travels through Mingrelia into Persia.]

Nations which, in later periods of their history, became eminent for civil

wisdom and justice, had, perhaps, in a former age, paroxysms of lawless

disorder, to which this description might in part be applied. The very

policy by which they arrived at their degree of national felicity, was

devised as a remedy for outrageous abuse. The establishment of order was

dated from the commission of rapes and murders; indignation, and private

revenge, were the principles on which nations proceeded to the expulsion of

tyrants, to the emancipation of mankind, and the full explanation of their

political rights.

Defects of government and of law may be, in some cases, considered as a

symptom of innocence and of virtue. But where power is already established,

where the strong are unwilling to suffer restraint, or the weak unable to

find a protection, the defects of law are marks of the most perfect

corruption.

Among rude nations, government is often defective; both because men are not

yet acquainted with all the evils for which polished nations have

endeavoured to find a redress; and because, even where evils of the most

flagrant nature have long afflicted the peace of society, they have not yet

been able to apply the cure. In the progress of civilization, new

distempers break forth, and new remedies are applied: but the remedy is

not always applied the moment the distemper appears; and laws, though

suggested by the commission of crimes, are not the symptom of a recent

corruption, but of a desire to find a remedy that may cure, perhaps, some

inveterate evil which has long afflicted the state.

There are corruptions, however, under which men still possess the vigour

and the resolution to correct themselves. Such are the violence and the

outrage which accompany the collision of fierce and daring spirits,

occupied in the struggles which sometimes precede the dawn of civil and

commercial improvements. In such cases, men have frequently discovered a

remedy for evils, of which their own misguided impetuosity, and superior

force of mind, were the principal causes. But if to a depraved disposition,

we suppose to be joined a weakness of spirit; if to an admiration and

desire of riches, be joined an aversion to danger or business; if those

orders of men whose valour is required by the public, cease to be brave; if

the members of society in general have not those personal qualities which

are required to fill the stations of equality, or of honour, to which they

are invited by the forms of the state; they must sink to a depth from which

their imbecility, even more than their depraved inclinations, may prevent

their rise.

SECTION, II

OF LUXURY.

We are far from being agreed on the application of the term _luxury_,

or on that degree of its meaning which is consistent with national

prosperity, or with the moral rectitude of our nature. It is sometimes

employed to signify a manner of life which we think necessary to

civilization, and even to happiness. It is, in our panegyric of polished

ages, the parent of arts, the support of commerce, and the minister of

national greatness, and of opulence. It is, in our censure of degenerate

manners, the source of corruption, and the presage of national declension

and ruin. It is admired, and it is blamed; it is treated as ornamental and

useful, and it is proscribed as a vice.

With all this diversity in our judgments, we are generally uniform in

employing the term to signify that complicated apparatus which mankind

devise for the ease and convenience of life. Their buildings, furniture,

equipage, clothing, train of domestics, refinement of the table, and, in

general, all that assemblage which is rather intended to please the fancy,

than to obviate real wants, and which is rather ornamental than useful.

When we are disposed, therefore, under the appellation of _luxury_, to rank

the enjoyment of these things among the vices, we either tacitly refer to

the habits of sensuality, debauchery, prodigality, vanity, and arrogance,

with which the possession of high fortune is sometimes attended; or we

apprehend a certain measure of what is necessary to human life, beyond

which all enjoyments are supposed to be excessive and vicious. When, on

the contrary, luxury is made an article of national lustre and felicity, we

only think of it as an innocent consequence of the unequal distribution of

wealth, and as a method by which different ranks are rendered mutually

dependent, and mutually useful. The poor are made to practise arts, and

the rich to reward them. The public itself is made a gainer by what seems

to waste its stock, and it receives a perpetual increase of wealth, from

the influence of those growing appetites, and delicate tastes, which seem

to menace consumption and ruin.