of the
characteristic manners that attend the way in which it obtains its
wealth and greatness. Merchants owe their wealth to a strict adherence
to their interest, and they cannot help shewing it.

The cruelties of the Spaniards have not excited the detestation they
deserved, because they were accompanied with courage, and crowned
with success; and that nation found means, in the midst of the most
horrible of human crimes, to preserve an appearance of greatness and
dignity of character. But the Dutch, who have gained wealth, like the
Carthaginians, and though they were conquerors, never quitted the
character of merchants, and they never possessed dignity of character,
though they triumphed by virtue, perseverance, and bravery, over that
very Spain which did preserve her dignity.

It is much more difficult to reconcile the character of trading nations
with the qualities that are improperly called great, than that of any
other. A commercial nation naturally will be just; it may be generous;
but it never can become extravagant and wasteful; neither can it be
incumbered with the lazy and the idle; for the moment that either of
these takes place, commerce flies to another habitation. {36}

---
{36} It follows, from this, that a commercial people never become so
degraded as those who obtain wealth by other means; but, then, it also
follows, that they exist a much shorter time after they become so, and
that wealth and power leave them much more speedily.
-=-

[end of page #37]

The purpose of this inquiry being, to examine the effects of wealth,
and its operation in the decline of nations; it appears to be of
considerable importance to remove the error, in which historians and
other writers have so long persevered, relative to the two greatest
republics of antiquity; particularly as their example applies the most
readily, and is the most frequently applied to two rival nations of
modern times; although the parallel is extremely imperfect in almost
every particular, and in some directly inadmissible. {37}

It cannot but be attended with some advantage to set this matter right.
It may, perhaps, tend in some degree to prevent the French from
attempting to imitate the Romans, when we shew them that a state,
whether a whole people, or a single city, exempted from taxes, and
living by the tribute of other countries, must, at all events, be
dependent on its armies. In short, military government and tributary
revenue are inse