It has tended to furnish matter of
distinction and vanity; and by incumbering the individual with new subjects
of personal care, to substitute the anxiety he entertains for a separate
fortune, instead of the confidence and the affection with which he should
unite with his fellow creatures, for their joint preservation.
Whether this suspicion be just or no, we are come to point at circumstances
tending to verify, or to disprove it: and if to understand the real
felicity of nations be of importance, it is certainly so likewise, to know
what are those weaknesses, and those vices, by which men not only mar this
felicity, but in one age forfeit all the external advantages they had
gained in a former.
The wealth, the aggrandizement, and power of nations, are commonly the
effects of virtue; the loss of these advantages is often a consequence of
vice. Were we to suppose men to have succeeded in the discovery and
application of every art by which states are preserved and governed; to
have attained, by efforts of wisdom and magnanimity, the admired
establishments and advantages of a civilized and flourishing people; the
subsequent part of their history, containing, according to vulgar
apprehension, a full display of those fruits in maturity, of which they had
till then carried only the blossom, and the first formation, should, still
more than the former, merit our attention, and excite our admiration.
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