other than mean and insufficient ideas. This
is but too true; and this is one of the reasons for which I blame such
institutions.

In a misery of this sort, admitting some few lenitives, and those too
but a few, nine parts in ten of the whole race of mankind drudge through
life. It may be urged perhaps, in palliation of this, that at least the
rich few find a considerable and real benefit from the wretchedness of
the many. But is this so in fact? Let us examine the point with a little
more attention. For this purpose the rich in all societies may he thrown
into two classes. The first is of those who are powerful as well as
rich, and conduct the operations of the vast political machine. The
other is of those who employ their riches wholly in the acquisition of
pleasure. As to the first sort, their continual care and anxiety, their
toilsome days, and sleepless nights, are next to proverbial. These
circumstances are sufficient almost to level their condition to that of
the unhappy majority; but there are other circumstances which place
them, in a far lower condition. Not only their understandings labor
continually, which is the severest labor, but their hearts are torn by
the worst, most troublesome, and insatiable of all passions, by avarice,
by ambition, by fear and jealousy. No part of the mind has rest. Power
gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue. Pity,
benevolence, friendship, are things almost unknown in high stations.
_Verae amicitiae rarissime inveniuntur in iis qui in honoribus reque
publica versantur_, says Cicero. And indeed courts are the schools where
cruelty, pride, dissimulation, and treachery are studied and taught in
the most vicious perfection. This is a point so clear and acknowledged,
that if it did not make a necessary part of my subject, I should pass it
by entirely. And this has hindered me from drawing at full length, and
in the most striking colors, this shocking picture of the degeneracy and
wretchedness of human nature, in that part which is vulgarly thought its
happiest and most amiable state. You know from what originals I could
copy such pictures. Happy are they who know enough of them to know the
little value of the possessors of such things, and of all that they
possess; and happy they who have been snatched from that post of danger
which they occupy, with the remains of their virtue; loss of honors,
wealth, titles, and even the loss of one's country, is nothing i