iety
is to procure the pleasures of luxury; that a nice and elegant taste of
voluptuous enjoyments is the perfection of merit; and that a king, who is
gallant, magnificent, liberal, who builds a fine palace, who furnishes it
well with good statues and pictures, who encourages the fine arts, and
makes them subservient to every modish vice, who has a restless ambition,
a perfidious policy, and a spirit of conquest, is better for them than a
Numa or a Marcus Aurelius. Whereas to check the excesses of luxury--those
excesses, I mean, which enfeeble the spirit of a nation--to ease the
people, as much as is possible, of the burden of taxes; to give them the
blessings of peace and tranquillity, when they can he obtained without
injury or dishonour; to make them frugal, and hardy, and masculine in the
temper of their bodies and minds, that they may be the fitter for war
whenever it does come upon them; but, above all, to watch diligently over
their morals, and discourage whatever may defile or corrupt them--is the
great business of government, and ought to be in all circumstances the
principal object of a wise legislature. Unquestionably that is the
happiest country which has most virtue in it; and to the eye of sober
reason the poorest Swiss canton is a much nobler state than the kingdom
of France, if it has more liberty, better morals, a more settled
tranquillity, more moderation in prosperity, and more firmness in danger.

_Plato_.--Your notions are just, and if your country rejects them she
will not long hold the rank of the first nation in Europe. Her
declension is begun, her ruin approaches; for, omitting all other
arguments, can a state be well served when the raising of an opulent
fortune in its service, and making a splendid use of that fortune, is a
distinction more envied than any which arises from integrity in office or
public spirit in government? Can that spirit, which is the parent of
national greatness, continue vigorous and diffusive where the desire of
wealth, for the sake of a luxury which wealth alone can support, and an
ambition aspiring, not to glory, but to profit, are the predominant
passions? If it exists in a king or a minister of state, how will either
of them find among a people so disposed the necessary instruments to
execute his great designs; or, rather, what obstruction will he not find
from the continual opposition of private interest to public? But if, on
the contrary, a court inclines to t