XXXVIII. These men of national genius and prejudice, whose spirits are
all flesh and blood, and whose breasts are always in contact with the
earth, like that of a snake, do in a community, what the old serpent
did in paradise, or as Luzbel did in Heaven, that is, introduce into
it, seditions, revolts, schisms, and battles. No fire assails a civil
edifice so violently, as the flame of national passion, for it consumes
the very stones of the fabric, levels merit to the ground, and makes
reason tremble, excites tumults and insults, and makes way for the
triumphant entry of ambition. Those hearts which ought to be cordially
united by the bond of brotherly love, that bond being broken asunder,
are miserably divided, and breathe nothing but vengeance and rancour.
They form parties, inlist auxiliaries, and range their forces; but
alas! in the end both the victors and vanquished are unfortunate and
unhappy; the last lose the day and their patience, and the first by
their conquest lose themselves.
XXXIX. In no words of sacred writ, is a call to a generous and virtuous
life painted in more lively colours, than in those of the Psalmist,
Psalm xliv. _Mark me, my Son, incline your ear, and attend to my words,
you must forget your townsmen, and the house of your father._ But how
greatly does he deviate from the precept contained in this admonition,
who so far from forgetting his townsmen, and the house of his father,
treasures up in his heart and memory, not only a house or a town, but a
whole province or kingdom.
XL. Alexander, after he had conquered Persia, caused the Macedonian
soldiers to marry Persian women, to the end, says Plutarch, that
forgetting their native land, they should only esteem as their
countrymen, those who were good, and regard as strangers those who were
bad: _Ut mundum pro patria, castra pro arce, bonos pro cognatis, malos
pro peregrinis agnoscerent._
XLI. It is an apophthegm, of many learned and wise men among the
Gentiles, that to a man of a strong and liberal mind, all the world is
his country. He who attaches his heart to that corner of the earth in
which he was born, cannot look upon all the world as his country, nor
himself as a citizen of it, and therefore the world should despise him,
as a narrow-minded and mean-spirited person.
XLII. I believe notwithstanding, that there is something figurative
contained in the words of the sentences before quoted, for mankind
can never be understood to be exempted from the love and service they
owe to the republic of which they are members, in preference to all
other states and kingdoms; but I apprehend also, that this obligation
should not be confined to a republic, because we were born within
its limits, but because we are members of its society; therefore, he
who has legally transferred his residence from the kingdom in which
he was born, to another different one, where he has settled himself,
and taken up his abode, contracts with respect to that kingdom, the
same obligations he owed to that in which he was born and nursed,
and he ought to regard it as the country to which he belongs. This
is a distinction, that was not rightly understood by many great men
of antiquity; and for this reason, we see in various authors of
note, some actions celebrated as heroic, which ought to have been
condemned as infamous. Demaratus King of Sparta, when he was unjustly
dethroned and driven out of his kingdom by his own subjects, was
kindly received and protected by the Persians. He lived among them as
a member of the Persian empire, and owed to that country, besides the
obligation of gratitude, the duty of a subject; but mark the sequel:
the Persians meditate a military expedition against the Lacedemonians;
and Demaratus, who is let into the secret, communicates the design
to the Spartans, in order that they might be prepared to defeat the
enterprize. Herodotus, and many other authors, celebrate this action,
as a commendable mark of the glorious and heroic love which Demaratus
entertained for his country; but I say, it was a perfidious, base,
unworthy, and treacherous act; because in virtue of the antecedent
circumstances, the obligation of his loyalty, together with his person,
had been transferred from Lacedemonia to Persia.
XLIII. To conclude: I assert that if by reason of being born in it,
we contract any obligation to a particular district or place, that
obligation is inferior to, and ought to give place to every other
christian or political one whatever. Surely the difference of being
born in this or that country is not so material, that this should
out-weigh every other consideration; therefore we ought never to prefer
our countryman only because he is our countryman, except in those
cases, where there is a perfect equality of all the other circumstances.
XLIV. In superior rulers, I don’t even with this limitation, admit of
any partiality, with respect to countrymen, for the following reasons:
first, because without being perfectly divested of this passion, it
is hardly possible in one instance or another, to shun the danger of
passing from favour to injustice. Secondly, that in whatever manner,
favour to our countrymen is limited and restrained, we are apt to fall
into an acceptation or preferable choice of persons, which by all those
who govern ought to be studiously avoided. Thirdly, superior rulers
being truly the fathers of their people, their impartial affection for
them should be regarded as a consideration so incomparably superior
to all others, that it ought to stifle and suffocate every kind of
motive or inclination to preference, except that, which is derived from
superior merit. It would be ridiculous in a father to love one child
better than another, only because this was born in his own town or
city, and the mother was delivered of the other in a different place,
in consequence of her being from home on a journey. Therefore all
those who govern, ought ever to retain in their hearts and memories,
the maxim of the famous queen of Carthage, who being informed that
the Trojans, in consequence of her marrying Eneas, entertained hopes
of receiving superior indulgences to the Tyrians from her, declared
her perfect indifference of affection for them all as a queen in the
following words:
_Tros, Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur._