This moral levelling is a SERVILE PRINCIPLE. It leads to practical
passive obedience far better than all the doctrines which the pliant
accommodation of theology to power has ever produced. It cuts up by
the roots, not only all idea of forcible resistance, but even of civil
opposition. It disposes men to an abject submission, not by opinion,
which may be shaken by argument or altered by passion, but by the strong
ties of public and private interest. For if all men who act in a public
situation are equally selfish, corrupt, and venal, what reason can be
given for desiring any sort of change, which, besides the evils which
must attend all changes, can be productive of no possible advantage?
The active men in the state are true samples of the mass. If they are
universally depraved, the commonwealth itself is not sound. We may amuse
ourselves with talking as much as we please of the virtue of middle or
humble life; that is, we may place our confidence in the virtue of
those who have never been tried. But if the persons who are continually
emerging out of that sphere be no better than those whom birth has
placed above it, what hopes are there in the remainder of the body,
which is to furnish the perpetual succession of the state? All who have
ever written on government are unanimous, that among a people generally
corrupt, liberty cannot long exist. And indeed how is it possible? when
those who are to make the laws, to guard, to enforce, or to obey them,
are, by a tacit confederacy of manners, indisposed to the spirit of all
generous and noble institutions.