at drains the country, and defeats the general felicity of which
civilisation is capable. All the European governments (France
now excepted) are constructed not on the principle of universal
civilisation, but on the reverse of it. So far as those governments
relate to each other, they are in the same condition as we conceive of
savage uncivilised life; they put themselves beyond the law as well
of God as of man, and are, with respect to principle and reciprocal
conduct, like so many individuals in a state of nature. The inhabitants
of every country, under the civilisation of laws, easily civilise
together, but governments being yet in an uncivilised state, and almost
continually at war, they pervert the abundance which civilised life
produces to carry on the uncivilised part to a greater extent. By thus
engrafting the barbarism of government upon the internal civilisation of
a country, it draws from the latter, and more especially from the poor,
a great portion of those earnings, which should be applied to their
own subsistence and comfort. Apart from all reflections of morality and
philosophy, it is a melancholy fact that more than one-fourth of the
labour of mankind is annually consumed by this barbarous system. What
has served to continue this evil, is the pecuniary advantage which
all the governments of Europe have found in keeping up this state of
uncivilisation. It affords to them pretences for power, and revenue,
for which there would be neither occasion nor apology, if the circle
of civilisation were rendered complete. Civil government alone, or the
government of laws, is not productive of pretences for many taxes; it
operates at home, directly under the eye of the country, and precludes
the possibility of much imposition. But when the scene is laid in
the uncivilised contention of governments, the field of pretences is
enlarged, and the country, being no longer a judge, is open to every
imposition, which governments please to act. Not a thirtieth, scarcely
a fortieth, part of the taxes which are raised in England are either
occasioned by, or applied to, the purpose of civil government. It is
not difficult to see, that the whole which the actual government does
in this respect, is to enact laws, and that the country administers
and executes them, at its own expense, by means of magistrates, juries,
sessions, and assize, over and above the taxes which it pays. In this
view of the case, we have two distinct characte