ORDINARY establishments terminate in a relaxation of vigour, and are ineffectual to the prefervation of states; because they lead mankind to rely on their arts, instead of their virtues, and to mistake for an improvement of human nature, a mere acceffion of accommodation, or of riches*. Institutions that fortify the mind, inspire courage, and promote national felicity, can never tend to national ruin.

Is it not poffible, amidst our admiration of arts, to find fome place for these? Let statesmen, who are intrusted with the government of nations, reply for themselves. It is their business to fhew, whether they climb into stations of eminence, merely to display a paffion for intereft, which they had better indulge in obfcurity; and whether they have capacity to understand the happiness of a people, the conduct of whose affairs they are so willing to undertake.

* Adeo in quæ laboramus fola crevimus Divitias Luxuriamque. Liv. lib. VII. C. 25.

SECT.

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SECT. IV.

The fame Subject continued.

EN frequently, while they are engaged in what is accounted the most selfish of all pursuits, the improvement of fortune, then most neglect themselves; and while they reason for their country, forget the confiderations that most deserve their attention. Numbers, riches, and the other refources of war, are highly important: but nations confift of men; and a nation confifting of degenerate and cowardly men, is weak; a nation consisting of vigorous, public-spirited, and refolute men, is ftrong. The refources of war, where other advantages are equal, may decide a conteft; but the refources of war, in hands that cannot employ them, are of no avail.

VIRTUE is a neceffary conftituent of national ftrength: capacity, and a vigorous understanding, are no less neceffary to fuftain the fortune of ftates. Both are improved by difcipline, and by the exercises in which men are engaged. We despise, or we pity, the lot of mankind, while they lived under uncertain establishments, and were obliged to sustain in the same person, the character of the fenator, the ftatesman, and the foldier. Commercial nations discover, that any one of these characters is fufficient in one person; and that the ends of each, when disjoined, X x

are

Part V. are more easily accomplished. The first, however, were circumftances under which nations advanced and profpered; the fecond were those in which the spirit relaxed, and the nation went to decay.

We may, with good reafon, congratulate our fpecies on their having escaped from a state of barbarous disorder and violence, into a ftate of domeftic peace and regularpolicy; when they have sheathed the dagger, and disarmed the animofities of civil contention; when the weaponswith which they contend are the reasonings of the wife, and the tongue of the eloquent. But we cannot, meantime, help to regret, that they fhould ever proceed, in fearch of perfection, to place every branch of administra tion behind the counter, and come to employ, instead of the statesman and warrior, the mere clerk and accountant..

By carrying this fyftem to its height, men are educated, who could copy for Cæfar his military inftructions, or even execute a part of his plans; but none who could act in all the different fcenes for which the leader himself must be qualified, in the ftate and in the field, in times of order or of tumult, in times of divifion or of unanimity;; none who could animate the council when deliberating on dómestic affairs, or when alarmed by attacks from abroad.

THE policy of China is the most perfect model of an arrangement, to which the ordinary refinements of

go

vernment

vernment are aimed; and the inhabitants of that empire poffefs, in the highest degree, those arts on which vulgar minds make the felicity and greatness of nations to depend. The ftate has acquired, in a measure unequalled in the history of mankind, numbers of men, and the other refources of war. They have done what we are very apt to admire; they have brought national affairs to the level of the meaneft capacity; they have broke them into parts, and thrown them into feparate departments; they have clothed every proceeding with fplendid ceremonies, and majestical forms; and where the reverence of forms cannot repress disorder, a rigorous and fevere police, armed with every species of corporal punishment, is applied to the purpose. The whip, and the cudgel, are held up to all orders of men; they are at once employed, and they are dreaded by every magiftrate. A mandarine is whipped, for having ordered a pickpocket to receive too few or too many blows.

EVERY department of ftate is made the object of a feparate profeffion, and every candidate for office muft have paffed through a regular education; and, as in the graduations of the university, must have obtained by his proficiency, or his standing, the degree to which he aspires. The tribunals of state, of war, and of the revenue, as well as of literature, are conducted by graduates in their different ftudies: but while learning is the great road to preferment, it terminates in being able to read, and to write; and the great object of government confifts in raising, and

in confuming the fruits of the earth, With all thefe refources, and this learned preparation, which is made to turn these resources to ufe, the ftate is in reality weak ; has repeatedly given the example which we seek to ex-plain; and among the doctors of war or of policy, among the millions who are fet apart for the military profeffion,, can find none of its members, who are fit to ftand forth in the dangers of their country, or to form a defence against the repeated inroads of an enemy reputed to be: artlefs and mean.

It is difficult to tell how long the decay of ftates might be fufpended by the cultivation of arts on which their real felicity and ftrength depend; by cultivating in the higherranks those talents for the council and the field, which cannot, without great difadvantage, be feparated; and in the body of a people, that zeal for their country, and that military character, which enable them to take a fhare in defending its rights..

TIMES may come, when every proprietor must defend his own poffeffions, and every free people maintain their own independence. We may imagine, that against fuch an extremity, an army of hired troops is a fufficient precaution; but their own troops are the very enemy against which a people is fometimes obliged to fight. We may flatter ourselves, that extremities of this fort, in any parti cular cafe, are remote; but we cannot, in reasoning on the general fortunes of mankind, avoid putting the cafe, and referring to the examples in which it has happened. 7

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