in a
poor republic, became very common in this wealthy one; so that this
republican government, so constituted, lost all those advantages it
possessed while it was poor.

Had the murderers of Julius Caesar, either understood the real
corruption of the commonwealth, or foreseen that a new master would
rise up, they would never have destroyed that admirable man. Had
Rome not been ready to receive a master, Julius Caesar, with all his
ambition, would never have grasped at the crown.

In nations that obtain wealth by commerce, manufactures, or any other
means than by conquests, the corruption of the state is not naturally so
great. The wealth originates in the people, and not in the state; and,
besides that they are more difficult to purchase, there is less means of
doing so, and less inducement; neither can they, being the sources of
wealth themselves, become so idle and corrupted. {39}

---
{39} The wild and ungovernable direction that the French revolution
took originated chiefly in the creation of assignats, which not only
exempted the people from taxes at first, but had the effect of
producing an artificial and temporary degree of wealth, that [end of
page #41] enabled vast numbers, either in the pay of others, or at their
own expense, to make cabals and politics their whole study. Rome
never was in such a licentious state, because, before the citizens got
into that situation, the military power was established.
-=-

In the ancient nations that fell one after another, we have seen the
young and vigorous subdue the more wealthy and luxurious; or we
have seen superior art and skill get the better of valour and ignorance;
but, in the fall of the Roman empire, the art and skill were all on the
side of those who fell, and the vigour of those who conquered was not
so powerful an agent as the very low and degraded state into which
the masters of the world had themselves fallen.

It is by no means consistent with the plan of this work, nor is it any
way necessary for the inquiry, to enter into the particular details of the
degraded and miserable state to which the Romans were reduced;
insomuch, that those who emigrated previously to its fall, and settled
amongst barbarous nations, found themselves more happy than they
had been, being freed from taxation and a variety of oppressions.

Though the Roman people are, of all others, those whose rise and fall
are the most distinctly known; yet, in some circumstances, their ca