nd it daily
causes among the innumerable pretenders whom it engages in the same
career. I could show that it is to this itch of being spoken of, to
this fury of distinguishing ourselves which seldom or never gives us a
moment's respite, that we owe both the best and the worst things among
us, our virtues and our vices, our sciences and our errors, our
conquerors and our philosophers; that is to say, a great many bad
things to a very few good ones. I could prove, in short, that if we
behold a handful of rich and powerful men seated on the pinnacle of
fortune and greatness, while the crowd grovel in obscurity and want,
it is merely because the first prize what they enjoy but in the same
degree that others want it, and that, without changing their
condition, they would cease to be happy the minute the people ceased
to be miserable.

But these details would alone furnish sufficient matter for a more
considerable work, in which might be weighed the advantages and
disadvantages of every species of government, relatively to the rights
of man in a state of nature, and might likewise be unveiled all the
different faces under which inequality has appeared to this day, and
may hereafter appear to the end of time, according to the nature of
these several governments, and the revolutions time must unavoidably
occasion in them. We should then see the multitude oppressed by
domestic tyrants in consequence of those very precautions taken by
them to guard against foreign masters. We should see oppression
increase continually without its being ever possible for the oppressed
to know where it would stop, nor what lawful means they had left to
check its progress. We should see the rights of citizens, and the
liberties of nations extinguished by slow degrees, and the groans, and
protestations and appeals of the weak treated as seditious murmurings.
We should see policy confine to a mercenary portion of the people the
honour of defending the common cause. We should see imposts made
necessary by such measures, the disheartened husbandman desert his
field even in time of peace, and quit the plough to take up the sword.
We should see fatal and whimsical rules laid down concerning the point
of honour. We should see the champions of their country sooner or
later become her enemies, and perpetually holding their poniards to
the breasts of their fellow citizens. Nay, the time would come when
they might be heard to say to the oppressor of their cou