misled or prepossessed by their splendid exploits, to disguise it under the veil of their love of country, glory, or religion, truth pierces every where; the insatiable. thirst for riches betrays itself in all their private actions and public concerns; and the illusions of the historian, and the fascinating powers of the orator, are both dispelled by the torch of history. Modern nations are not less addicted to the passion for wealth, than the nations of antiquity and the middle age: but they have been more enlightened, or more fortunate in the direction which they have given to that passion; and their wisdom or good fortune has not only guarded them against the perils and calamities attached to riches, but has also made them sensible of the unforeseen, incalculable, and unbounded benefit, which wealth is capable of affording *. Venice, Genoa, Pisa, and Florence, which first * I fear, the moderns are little entitled to this compliment. Neither nations nor individuals are content to grow rich by labour and industry, until they are precluded from becoming so by plunder and violence. This is sufficiently proved by the behaviour of all European nations to the natives of the East and West Indies, and by the revival of slavery in its most odious form, wherever the inferiority of one race rendered it safe for the other to exercise such an unjust dominion. The secret partisans of the Slave-trade are still too numerous, even in the country whose laws have acknow. ledged its barbarity, and pronounced it felony, to allow any shouts of triumph on account of the improved dispositions of mankind with regard to their desire of riches. The immutability of human nature, in this respect, is unfortunately too strongly confirmed by the conduct of the two most enlightened nations of Europe in our times: the English, some years ago in the East Indies, and the French all over the continent, and at this very hour, in Spain.-T. attract our attention in modern history, turned their passion for wealth to labour, industry, and commerce. Though they sometimes fought for the advantages of an exclusive commerce, yet their wars had less tendency to enrich them with the spoils of their enemies, than to remove competitors and rivals, and to enjoy a monopoly, of which the ignorance of the times magnified the benefits, and kept the vices and inconveniencies out of sight. It was only in labour, manufactures, and commerce, that the Hanseatic towns and the cities of Spain, France, and Germany, when they escaped from feudal depredations, sought for means to enrich themselves the object of their league was merely a system of defence contrived for the interest of the confederates, and inoffensive in every other respect. respect. History accuses them neither of violence nor of usurpation. Though the Portuguese and Spaniards, who first sailed beyond the Cape of Good Hope, and found a new world, shewed themselves on the outset as conquerors in the countries which they discovered; though they carried thither the spirit of rapine and conquest which was still predominant in Europe, and stripped the vanquished of their manufactured and agricultural produce; the impossibility of turning this produce to advantage, without exchanging it for other commodities, subjected them to the law of competition, which, as it excludes every idea of force and violence, is intimately allied to notions of justice and equality, and connects all men by the need in which they stand of each other. This barter, exchange, or commerce, which was become the basis of the connection of the European nations with each other, exercised also a favourable influence over their relations with the nations of Hindostan and America. In vain do force and violence still attempt to keep them in subjection, and to maintain an odious monopoly in those two portions of the globe. Modern nations have no solid and durable means to enrich themselves, but by labour, by the developement and improvement of their faculties, by the economy and rapid circulation of their produce, and by its wise application, distribution, and consumption. From Kamtschatka to the Pillars of Hercules, from the Elbe to the Ionian Sea, labour is the power which distributes wealth, and whose favours all nations implore; and it is particularly worthy of remark, that this wealth, far from occasioning the destruction or decline of opulent nations, has proved the firmest support of their prosperity, power, and grandeur. Whenever particular causes have dried up or diminished the source and abundance of this wealth, nations have declined in consideration, grandeur, and power, in the ratio of their impoverishment. Venice, Genoa, Florence, the Hanseatic Towns, and even Holland, lost their preponderance, or political influence, only when their commerce, the principal source of their riches, declined, and, taking a different road, went to enrich nations possessed of a more extensive territory and a larger population. Thus the nations of antiquity, as well as those of the middle age and modern times, have all been ruled by the passion for riches: they only differ in the means employed to satisfy that passion. This differ ence satisfactorily explains the various effects which wealth has had upon these different nations, and throws a brilliant light upon its true nature. The ancients and the people of the middle age knew and practised but one way to grow rich, and to increase and keep their riches: they placed their hope and confidence in the right of the strongest, to which they made their institutions, their laws, their manners, and their customs, subservient. Their only object was to render their population numerous, brave, skilled in arms, and always ready to sacrifice themselves for the purpose of subduing other nations and seizing their wealth. But, by a singular fatality, it happened that, in proportion as these nations improved in military science, as their arms were successful and their wealth augmented by victories, their domination lost its stability, they became less able to defend themselves, their grandeur shortly declined, and they were soon subdued. Both moralists and publicists have observed this phenomenon, and have thence inferred that wealth caused the fall of the great empires of antiquity: and it must be confessed, that their opinion appears indeed an immediate consequence of the most certain and best authenticated facts. But have they not gone too far, when they nagnified this consequence into a principle, and pronounced the wealth and safety of nations, and the opulence and preservation of empires, to be absolutely incompatible? Had they inquired without prejudice into the causes which rendered riches fatal to the Persians, to the Greeks, to the Carthaginians, to the Romans, and to the nations of the middle age, they would have perceived that these causes did not arise from a vice particularly inherent in wealth, but from the system of violence by which these nations acquired their riches; from the nature of their military government, which concentrated wealth in the least numerous class, and, as it enslaved or impoverished the other classes, rendered wealth equally fatal to the rich and to the poor, to individuals and to the state. Among the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans, the people were divided into two classes. One, composed of slaves, formed three-fourths, two-thirds, or at least half of the population. The other, composed of freemen, formed the state, the nation, the country. Although all the individuals of this class had an equal right to the benefits of the social compact, they yet did not share these benefits in equal portions. Independently of the inequality of individual faculties which in every community opposes the equal distribution of wealth, an essentially military government favoured this inequality, and aggravated its pressure and misery, At the origin of empires, the vices of this concentration were not felt, because the military force consisted of all the citizens, and all had more or less share in the booty and riches conquered upon the enemy. The desire of wealth was at that period the surest pledge of victory, and the most powerful cause of the elevation and grandeur of the state. But when the whole body of the citizens was no longer wanted |