" [Footnote: Simon de St. Quintin.]
These are the terms to which even the stubborn heart of the barbarian has
been reduced, in consequence of a despotism he himself had established; and
men have in that low state of the commercial arts, in Europe, as well as in
Asia, tasted of political slavery. When interest prevails in every breast,
the sovereign and his party cannot escape the infection: he employs the
force with which he is intrusted to turn his people into a property, and to
command their possessions for his profit or his pleasure. If riches are by
any people made the standard of good or of evil, let them beware of the
powers they intrust to their prince. "With the Suiones," says Tacitus,
"riches are in high esteem; and this people are accordingly disarmed, and
reduced to slavery." [Footnote: De moribus Germanorum.]
It is in this woful condition that mankind, being slavish, interested,
insidious, deceitful, and bloody, bear marks, if not of the least curable,
surely of the most lamentable sort of corruption. [Footnote: Chardin's
Travels.] Among them, war is the mere practice of rapine, to enrich the
individual; commerce is turned into a system of snares and impositions; and
government by turns oppressive or weak.
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