day of vengeance; and he is the more enraged in proportion as fear has held his fury the longer restrained.*

What a striking picture of a sudden change in the character of a nation does the Roman history present us. What people, before the elevation of the Caesars, shewed more force, more virtue, more love for liberty, and horror for slavery? And what people, when the throne of the Caesar's was established, shewed more weakness and depravity? Their baseness disgusted Tiberius.

Indifferent to liberty, when Trajan offered it, they refused it they disdained that liberty their ancestors had purchased with so much blood. All things were then changed in Rome; and that determined and grave character which distinguished its first inhabitants, was succeeded by that light and frivolous disposition with which Juvenal reproaches them in his tenth satire.

Let us exemplify this matter by a more recent change. Compare the English of the present day with those under Henry VIII. Edward VI. Mary, and Elizabeth: this people, now so humane, indulgent, learned, free, and industrious, such lovers of the arts and of philosophy, were then nothing more than a nation of slaves, inhuman and superstitious; without arts and without industry.

When a prince usurps over his people a boundless authority, he is sure to change their character; to enervate their souls; to render them

timid and base. From that moment, indifferent to glory, his subjects lose that character of boldness and constancy proper to suppress all labours and brave all dangers: the weight of arbitrary power destroys the spring of their emulation.

Does a prince, impatient of eontradiction, give the name of factious to the man of veracity? he substitutes in his nation the character of falsity for that of frankness. If in those critical moments the prince, giving himself up to flatterers, find that he is surrounded by men void of all merit, whom should he blame? Himself: for it is he that has made them such.

Who could believe, when he considers the evils of servitude, that there were still princes mean enough to wish to reign over slaves, and stupid enough to be ignorant of the fatal changes that despotism produces in the character of their subjects?

What is arbitrary power? The seed of calamities, that sown in the bosom of a state springs up to bear the fruit of misery and devastation. Let us hear the King of Prussia; Nothing is better, said he, in a discourse pronounced to the academy of Berlin, than an arbitrary government, under princes just, humane, and virtuous nothing worse, under the common race of kings. Now how many kings are there of the latter sort! and how many such as Titus, Trajan, and Antoninus? These are the thoughts of a great man. What elevation of mind, what knowledge does not such a declara.

tion suppose in a monarch? What in fact does a despotic power announce? Often ruin to the despot, and always to his posterity. The founder of such a power sets his kingdom on a sandy foundation. It is only a transient, ill-judged notion of royalty; that is, of pride, idleness, or some similar passion, which prefers the exercise of an unjust and cruel despotism over wretched slaves, to that of a legitimate and friendly power, over a free and happy people. Arbitrary power is a thoughtless child, who continually sacrifices the future to the present..

The most redoubtable enemy of the public welfare is not riot or sedition, but despotism; it changes the character of a nation, and always for the worse: it produces nothing but Vices. Whatever might be the power of an Indian sultan, he could never form magnanimous subjects; he would never find among his slaves the virtues of free men. Chymistry can extract no more gold from a mixed body than it includes; and the most arbitrary power can draw nothing from a slave but the baseness he contains.

Experience then proves that the character and spirit of a people, change with the form of government; and that a different government gives by turns, to the same

it is the effect of their different instruction.

Why, say strangers, do we perceive at once, in all the French, the same spirit, and the same character, like the same phisiognomy in all Negroes? Because the French do not judge or think for themselves, but after the people in power. Their manner of judging for this reason must be sufficiently uniform. It is with Frenchmen as with their wives when they paint themselves, and go to a public show, they all seem of the same complexion. I know that with attention we can always discover between the characters and understandings of individuals; but to do this requires time.

The ignorance of the French, the iniquity of their police, and the influence of their clergy, render them in general more like each other than men of other countries. Now, if such be the influence of the form of government on the manners and character of a people, what alteration in the ideas and characters of individuals ought not to be produced by the alterations that happen in their fortune and situa

tion

On the Causes of the Decadency of an Empire; from the same.

HE introduction and improve

in an empire, do not occasion" its decadency; but the same causes that accelerate the progress of the sciences, sometimes produce the most fatal effects.

There are nations where, by a peculiar series of circumstances, the seeds of the arts and sciences do

not

:

A certain number of men assemble to form a society. These men found a city their neighbours see it rise up with a jealous eye. The inhabitants of that city, forced to be at once labourers and soldiers, make use by turns of the spade and the sword. What in such a country is the necessary science and virtue? The military art and valour; they alone are there respected. Every other science and virtue is there unknown. Such was the state of rising Rome: when weak and surrounded by warlike nations, it with difficulty sustained their attacks. Its glory and power extended over the whole earth; it acquired, however, the one and the other but slowly ages of triumphs were necessary to subject their neighbours. Now when the surrounding nations were subdued, there arose, from the form of their government, civil wars, which were succeeded by those with foreigners; so that it cannot be imagined, while the citizens were engaged in the different employments of magistrates and soldiers, and incessantly agitated with strong hopes and fears, they could enjoy the leisure and tranquillity necessary to the study of the sciences.

In every country where these events succeed each other in a regular series, the only period favourable to letters is, unfortunately, that when the civil wars, the troubles and factions being extinguished, liberty is expiring, as in the time of Augustus, under the strokes of despotism. Now this period precedes, but a short time,

arts and sciences, however, then flourish; and that for two reasons.

The first is the force of men's passions. In the first moments of slavery, their minds, still agitated by the remembrance of their lost liberty, are like the sea after a tempest. The citizen still burns with a desire to render himself illustrious; but his situation is altered. He cannot have his bust placed by that of Timoleon, Pelopidas, or Brutus. He cannot deliver his name down to posterity as the destroyer of tyrants, and the avenger of liberty. His statue may, however, be placed by those of Homer, Epicurus, or Archimedes. This he knows, and therefore if there be but one sort of glory to which he can aspire, if it be with the laurels of the Muses alone that he can be crowned, it is in the career of the arts and sciences he prepares to seek them, and it is then that arise illustrious men of every literary profession.

The second of these causes is the interest sovereigns then have to encourage the progress of the sciences. At the moment that despotism is established, what does the monarch desire? To inspire his subjects with a love of the arts and sciences. What does he fear? That they should reflect on their fetters, blush at their servitude, and again turn their looks towards liberty. He would, therefore, by employing their minds, make them forget their base condition. He consequently presents them with new objects of glory. As an bypocritical fautor of the arts and

sciences,

sciences, he shows the more regard to the man of genius the 'more he feels the want of his eulogies.

The manners of a nation do not change the moment despotism is, established. The spirit of the people is free some time after their hands are tied. During these first moments illustrious men still preserve some consideration. The tyrant, therefore, loads them with favours, that they may load him with praises, and men of great talents are too often seduced to become the panegyrists of usurpation and tyranny.

What motives can induce them to it? Sometimes meanness, and frequently gratitude. It must be confessed, that every great revolution in an empire supposes great talents in him by whom it is produced, or at least some brilliant vice, that astonishment and gratitude metamorphose into virtue. Such is, at the time of the establishment of despotism, the productive cause of great accomplishments in the arts and sciences. The first moments past, if the same country become barren in men of talent, it is because the tyrant being then well established on his throne is no longer in want of their assistance. So that the reign of the arts and sciences in a state seldom extends above a century or two. The aloe is an emblem of the production of the sciences in every state; a hundred years are necessary to strengthen its root and make it put forth its branches; it then shoots up, flowers, and dies.

If in each empire the sciences just shoot up and then wither, it is because the motives proper to produce men of genius, do not

commonly exert themselves there more than once. It is at the highest period of grandeur, that a nation commonly produces the fruits of the arts and sciences. While three or four generations of illustrious men pass away, the people change their manners and sink into servitude; their minds have lost their energy; there is no strong passion remains to put them in action. The tyrant no longer excites the people to the pursuit of any kind of glory. It is not talents, but baseness, he now honours: and genius, if it still remain, lives and dies unknown to its own country it is like the orange-tree, that flourishes, perfumes the air, and

dies in a desart.

Despotism, while it is gaining ground, suffers men to say what they will, while they suffer it to do what it will: but once established, it forbids all talking, writing, or thinking. ing, or thinking. The minds of men then sink into an apathy: all the inhabitants become slaves, curse the breast that gave them milk, and, under such a government, every new birth is an increase of misery.

Genius, there chained, drags its irons heavily along; it does not fly, it creeps. The sciences are neglected; ignorance is honoured, and every man of discernment declared an enemy to the state. In the kingdom of the blind, who is the most odious? He that can see clearly. If the blind seize him, his destruction is certain. Now, in the empire of ignorance, the same fate attends the enlightened inhabitant. The press is there the more restrained, as the views of the minister are more confined. Under

the