*

of liberty.) While they were intense patriots, they were the benefactors of all mankind, legislators for the very nation that afterwards subdued and enslaved them. When, therefore, they became pure cosmopolites, and no partial affections interrupted their philanthropy, and when yet they retained their country, their language, and their arts, what noble works, what mighty discoveries may we not expect from them? If the applause of a little city, the first-rate town of a country not much larger than Yorkshire, and the encouragement of a Pericles, produced a Phidias, a Sophocles, and a constellation of other stars scarcely inferior in glory, what will not the applause of the world effect, and the boundless munificence of the world's imperial masters? Alas! no Sophocles appeared, no Phidias was born; individual genius fled with national independence, and the best products were cold and laborious copies of what their fathers had thought and invented in grandeur and majesty. At length nothing remained, but dastardly and cunning slaves, who avenged their own ruin and degradation by assisting to degrade and ruin their conquerors; and the golden harp of their divine language remained only as the frame on which priests and monks spun their dirty cobwebs of sophistry and superstition!

If then in order to be men we must be patriots, and patriotism can not exist without national independence, we need no new or particular code of morals to justify us in placing and preserving our country in that relative situation which is most favorable to its independence. But the true patriot is aware that this object is not to be accomplished by a system of general conquest, such as was pursued by Philip of Macedon and his son, nor yet by the political annihilation of the one state, which happens to be its most formidable rival;-the unwise measure recommended by Cato, and carried into effect by the Romans in the instance of Carthage. Not by the latter;-for rivalry between two nations conduces to the independence of both, calls forth or fosters all the virtues by which national security is maintained;-and still less by the former; for the victor nation itself must at length, by the very extension of its own conquests, sink into a mere province ; nay, it will most probably become the most abject portion of the empire, and the most cruelly oppressed, both because it will be * Quibus reliquam umbram et residuum libertatis nomen eripere, durum, ferum, barbarumque est.—Ib.—Ed.

more feared and suspected by the common tyrant, and because it will be the sink and centre of his luxury and corruption. Even in cases of actual injury and just alarm the patriot sets bounds to the reprisal of national vengeance, and contents himself with such securities as are compatible with the welfare, though not with the ambitious projects of the nation, the aggressions of which had given the provocation: for as patriotism inspires no superhuman faculties, neither can it dictate any conduct which would require such. He is too conscious of his own ignorance of the future, to dare extend his calculations into remote periods; nor, because he is a statesman, arrogates to himself the cares of Providence and the government of the world. How does he know, but that the very independence and consequent virtues of the nation, which in the anger of cowardice he would fain reduce to absolute insignificance, and rob even of its ancient name, may in some future emergence be the destined guardians of his own country; and that the power which now alarms, may hereafter protect and preserve it? The experience of history authorizes to believe not only in the possibility, but even the probability, of such an event. An American commander,* who has deserved and received the highest honors which his grateful country, through her assembled representatives, could bestow upon him, once said to me with a sigh: In an evil hour for my country did the French and Spaniards abandon Louisiana to the United States. We were not sufficiently a country before and should we ever be mad enough to drive the English from Canada and her other North American provinces, we shall soon cease to be a country at all. Without local attachment, without national honor, we shall resemble a swarm of insects that settle on the fruits of the earth to corrupt and consume them, rather than men who love and cleave to the land of their forefathers. After a shapeless anarchy and a series of civil wars, we shall at last be formed into many countries; unless the vices engendered in the process should demand further punishment, and we should previously fall beneath the despotism of some military adventurer, like a lion consumed by an inward disease, prostrate and helpless beneath the beak and talons of a vulture, or yet meaner bird of prey.t

* Decatur.-Ed.

† See Table Talk, VI. p. 398.--Ed.

ESSAY XIV.

Ό, τι μὲν πρὸς τὸν 18 ὅλου πλοῦτον, μᾶλλον δὲ πρὸς τὸ φάντασμα πόλεως ἁπάσης, ὅ πανταχῆ καὶ οὐδαμῇ ἐςὶ, φέρει μάθημα καὶ ἐπιτήδευμα, τοῦτο χρήσι μον καὶ σόφον τὶ δοξασθήσεται· τῶν δὲ ἄλλων καταγελᾷ ὁ πολιτικὸς. Ταύτην τὴν αἰτίαν χρὴ φάναι τοῦ μήτε ἄλλο καλὸν, μήτε τὰ πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον μεγαλοπρέπως ἀσκεῖν τὰς πόλεις, τῶν πολίτων μάλ' ἐνίοτε οὐκ ἀφυῶν ὄντων δυστυχούντων γε μήν, Πῶς λέγεις; Πῶς μὲν οὖν αὐτοὺς οὐ λέγοιμ' ἄν παράπαν δυστυχεῖς, οἷς γε ἀνάγκη δια βίου πεινῶσι τὴν ψυχὴν ἀεὶ τὴν αὐτῶν διεξελθεῖν. PLATO.

Whatever study or doctrine bears upon the wealth of the whole, say rather on a certain phantom of a state in the whole, which is everywhere and nowhere, this shall be deemed most useful and wise; and all else is the state-craftsman's scorn. This we dare pronounce the cause why nations torpid on their dignity in general, conduct their wars so little in a grand and magnanimous spirit, while the citizens are too often wretched, though endowed with high capabilities by nature. How say you? Nay, how should I not call them wretched, who are under the unrelenting necessity of wasting away their life in the mere search after the means of supporting it?

In the preceding essay I treated of what may be wisely desired in respect to our foreign relations. The same sanity of mind will the true patriot display in all that regards the internal prosperity of his country. He will reverence not only whatever tends to make the component individuals more happy, and more worthy of happiness; but likewise whatever tends to bind them more closely together as a people;—that as a multitude of parts and functions make up one human body, so the whole multitude of his countrymen may, by the visible and invisible influences of religion, language, laws, customs, and the reciprocal dependence and re-action of trade and agriculture, be organized into one body politic. But much as he desires to see all become a whole, he

* De Legibus, viii.—The Greek is chiefly taken from the beginning of this book of the Laws; but it is not taken consecutively; some of the expressions are from other parts of Plato, and some seem to be the Author's own. Ed.

places limits even to this wish, and abhors that system of policy which would blend men into a state by the dissolution of all those virtues which make them happy and estimable as individuals. Sir James Steuart, after stating the case of the vine-dresser, who is proprietor of a bit of land, on which grain (enough, and no more) is raised for himself and family, and who provides for their other wants, of clothing, salt, &c. by his extra labor as a vinedresser, observes :-'From this example we discover the difference between agriculture exercised as a trade, and as a direct means of subsisting. We have the two species in the vinedresser he labors the vineyard as a trade, and his spot of ground for subsistence. We may farther conclude, that as to the last part he is only useful to himself; but as to the first, he is useful to the society and becomes a member of it; consequently were it not for his trade the state would lose nothing, although the vinedresser and his land were both swallowed up by an earthquake.'*

Now this contains the sublime philosophy of the sect of economists. They worship a kind of nonentity under the different words, the state, the whole, the society, and so on, and to this idol they make bloodier sacrifices than ever the Mexicans did to Tescalipoca. All, that is, each and every sentient being in a given tract, are made diseased and vicious, in order that each may become useful to all, or the state, or the society,—that is, to the word, all, the word state, or the word society. The absurdity may be easily perceived by omitting the words relating to this idol-as for instance-in a former paragraph of the same (in most respects) excellent work: 'If it therefore happens that an additional number produced do no more than feed themselves, then I perceive no advantage gained from their production.'† What! No advantage gained by, for instance, ten thousand happy, intelligent, and immortal beings having been produced!O yes! but no advantage to this society.-What is this society, this whole, this state? Is it any thing else but a word of convenience to express at once the aggregate of confederated individuals living in a certain district? Let the sum total of each man's happiness be supposed 1000; and suppose ten thousand men produced, who neither made swords nor poison, nor found corn nor clothes for those who did-but who procured by their labor food and raiment for themselves, and for their children

* Polit. Econ. vol. i. c. 14.--Ed.·

† Tb.-Ed.

would not that society be richer by 10,000,000 parts of happiness ? And think you it possible, that ten thousand happy human beings can exist together without increasing each other's happiness, or that it will not overflow into countless channels,* and diffuse itself through the rest of the society?

The poor vine-dresser rises from sweet sleep, worships his Maker, goes with his wife and children into his little plot-returns to his hut at noon, and eats the produce of the similar labor of a former day. Is he useful? No, not yet. Suppose then, that during the remaining hours of the day he endeavored to provide for his moral and intellectual appetites, by physical experiments and philosophical research, by acquiring knowledge for himself and communicating it to his wife and children. Would he be useful then? He useful! 'The state would lose nothing although the vine-dresser and his land were both swallowed up by an earthquake! Well then, instead of devoting the latter half of each day to his closet, his laboratory, or to neighborly conversation, suppose he goes to the vineyard, and from the ground which would maintain in health, virtue, and wisdom, twenty of his fellow-creatures, helps to raise a quantity of liquor that will disease the bodies and debauch the souls of a hundred-Is he useful now? O yes! a very useful man, and a most excellent citizen.†

In what then does the law between state and state differ from that between man and man? For hitherto we seem to have discovered no variation. The law of nations is the law of common honesty, modified by the circumstances in which states differ from individuals. According to my best understanding, the difference may be reduced to this one point: that the influence of example in any extraordinary case, as the possible occasion of an action apparently like, though in reality very different, is of * Well, and in the spirit of genuine philosophy, does the poet describe such beings as men

Who being innocent do for that cause
Bestir them in good deeds

Wordsworth.

Providence, by the ceaseless activity which it has implanted in our nature, has sufficiently guarded against an innocence without virtue.

So in Jollie's and Hutchinson's History of Cumberland, the writer speaks of a small estatesman, bred to a rural life, who can not betake himself from an indolent habit to manufacturing and labor !--Introd. p. 39, 1830.

31*