icians have taught us to believe is
our principal glory.

How far mere nature would have carried us, we may judge by the example
of those animals who still follow her laws, and even of those to whom
she has given dispositions more fierce, and arms more terrible than ever
she intended we should use. It is an incontestable truth that there is
more havoc made in one year by men of men, than has been made by all the
lions, tigers, panthers, ounces, leopards, hyenas, rhinoceroses,
elephants, bears and wolves, upon their several species, since the
beginning of the world; though these agree ill enough with each other,
and have a much greater proportion of rage and fury in their composition
than we have. But with respect to you, ye legislators, ye civilizers of
mankind! ye Orpheuses, Moseses, Minoses, Solons, Theseuses, Lycurguses,
Numas! with respect to you be it spoken, your regulations have done more
mischief in cold blood, than all the rage of the fiercest animals in
their greatest terrors, or furies, has ever done, or ever could do!

These evils are not accidental. Whoever will take the pains to consider
the nature of society will find that they result directly from its
constitution. For as _subordination_, or, in other words, the
reciprocation of tyranny and slavery, is requisite to support these
societies; the interest, the ambition, the malice, or the revenge, nay,
even the whim and caprice of one ruling man among them, is enough to arm
all the rest, without any private views of their own, to the worst and
blackest purposes: and what is at once lamentable, and ridiculous, these
wretches engage under those banners with a fury greater than if they
were animated by revenge for their own proper wrongs.

It is no less worth observing, that this artificial division of mankind
into separate societies is a perpetual source in itself of hatred and
dissension among them. The names which distinguish them are enough to
blow up hatred and rage. Examine history; consult present experience;
and you will find that far the greater part of the quarrels between
several nations had scarce any other occasion than that these nations
were different combinations of people, and called by different names: to
an Englishman, the name of a Frenchman, a Spaniard, an Italian, much
more a Turk, or a Tartar, raises of course ideas of hatred and contempt.
If you would inspire this compatriot of ours with pity or regard for one
of these, would you not