d, not as his prisoner, but his
property. He led him in triumph rattling in chains, and doomed him, at
pleasure, to slavery or death. As time obliterated the history of their
beginning, their successors assumed new appearances, to cut off the
entail of their disgrace, but their principles and objects remained the
same. What at first was plunder, assumed the softer name of revenue; and
the power originally usurped, they affected to inherit.

From such beginning of governments, what could be expected but a
continued system of war and extortion? It has established itself into a
trade. The vice is not peculiar to one more than to another, but is the
common principle of all. There does not exist within such governments
sufficient stamina whereon to engraft reformation; and the shortest and
most effectual remedy is to begin anew on the ground of the nation.

What scenes of horror, what perfection of iniquity, present themselves
in contemplating the character and reviewing the history of such
governments! If we would delineate human nature with a baseness of
heart and hypocrisy of countenance that reflection would shudder at and
humanity disown, it is kings, courts and cabinets that must sit for the
portrait. Man, naturally as he is, with all his faults about him, is not
up to the character.

Can we possibly suppose that if governments had originated in a right
principle, and had not an interest in pursuing a wrong one, the world
could have been in the wretched and quarrelsome condition we have seen
it? What inducement has the farmer, while following the plough, to lay
aside his peaceful pursuit, and go to war with the farmer of another
country? or what inducement has the manufacturer? What is dominion to
them, or to any class of men in a nation? Does it add an acre to any
man's estate, or raise its value? Are not conquest and defeat each of
the same price, and taxes the never-failing consequence?--Though this
reasoning may be good to a nation, it is not so to a government. War is
the Pharo-table of governments, and nations the dupes of the game.

If there is anything to wonder at in this miserable scene of governments
more than might be expected, it is the progress which the peaceful arts
of agriculture, manufacture and commerce have made beneath such a long
accumulating load of discouragement and oppression. It serves to show
that instinct in animals does not act with stronger impulse than
the principles of society and ci