How much of that prosperous state was owing to the spirit of our old
manners and opinions is not easy to say; but as such causes cannot be
indifferent in their operation, we must presume that, on the whole,
their operation was beneficial.
We are but too apt to consider things in the state in which we find
them, without sufficiently adverting to the causes by which they have
been produced, and possibly may be upheld. Nothing is more certain, than
that our manners, our civilization, and all the good things which are
connected with manners and with civilization, have, in this European
world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles, and were indeed
the result of both combined; I mean the spirit of a gentleman and the
spirit of religion. The nobility and the clergy, the one by profession,
the other by patronage, kept learning in existence, even in the midst of
arms and confusions, and whilst governments were rather in their causes,
than formed. Learning paid back what it received to nobility and to
priesthood; and paid it with usury, by enlarging their ideas, and by
furnishing their minds. Happy if they had all continued to know their
indissoluble union, and their proper place! Happy if learning, not
debauched by ambition, had been satisfied to continue the instructor,
and not aspired to be the master! Along with its natural protectors and
guardians, learning will be cast into the mire, and trodden down under
the hoofs of a swinish multitude.
If, as I suspect, modern letters owe more than they are always willing
to own to ancient manners, so do other interests which we value full as
much as they are worth. Even commerce, and trade, and manufacture,
the gods of our economical politicians, are themselves, perhaps, but
creatures; are themselves but effects, which, as first causes, we choose
to worship. They certainly grew under the same shade in which learning
flourished. They too may decay with their natural protecting principles.
With you, for the present at least, they all threaten to disappear
together. Where trade and manufactures are wanting to a people, and the
spirit of nobility and religion remains, sentiment supplies, and not
always ill supplies, their place; but if commerce and the arts should
be lost in an experiment to try how well a state may stand without these
old fundamental principles, what sort of a thing must be a nation
of gross, stupid, ferocious, and, at the same time, poor and sordid
barbarians, destitute of religion, honour, or manly pride, possessing
nothing at present, and hoping for nothing hereafter?