ry, it may be well, for the sake of being
explicitly understood, to define what I mean by wealthy and powerful
nations.

In speaking of nations, wealth and power are sometimes related to
each other, as cause and effect. Sometimes there is between a mutual
action and re-action. In the natural or ordinary course of things, they
are, at first, intimately connected and dependent on each other, till, at
last, this connection lessening by degrees, and they even act in
opposite directions; when wealth undermines and destroys power, but
power never destroys wealth. {10}

Though wealth and power are often found united, they are sometimes
found separated. Wealth is altogether a real possession; power is
comparative. Thus, a nation may be wealthy in itself, though
unconnected with any other nation; but its power can only be
estimated by a comparison with that of other nations.

Wealth consists in having abundance of whatever mankind want or
desire; and if there were but one nation on earth, it might be wealthy;
but it would, in that case, be impossible to measure its power.

Wealth is, however, not altogether real; it is in a certain degree
comparative, whereas power is altogether comparative.

The Romans, for example, may very justly be called the most

---
{10} Till a nation has risen above its neighbours, and those to whom it
compares itself, wealth and power act in the same direction; but, after
it has got beyond that point, they begin to counteract each other.
-=-

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powerful nation that ever existed, yet a single battalion of our present
troops, well supported with artillery, would have probably destroyed
the finest army they ever sent into the field. A single ship of the line
would certainly have sunk, taken, or put to flight, all the fleets that
Rome and Carthage ever sent to sea. The feeblest and least powerful
of civilized nations, with the present means of fighting, and the
knowledge of the present day, would defeat an ancient army of the
most powerful description. Power then is entirely relative; and what is
feebleness now, would, at a certain time, have been force or power.

It is not altogether so with wealth, which consists in the abundance of
what men desire. The Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, had wealth;
and this, though, perhaps, not consisting in the same objects, was,
perhaps, not inferior to ours at the present time; but as wealth, purely
and simply, no comparison between different