But if this progress goes on, while a nation is acquiring wealth, how much faster does it not proceed when it approaches towards its decline? It is, then, indeed, that the extremes of poverty and riches are to be seen in the most striking degree.
The higher classes can never be made to contribute their share towards the prosperity of a state; where there are no middling classes to connect the higher and lower orders, and to protect the lower orders from the power of the higher, a state must gradually decline.
It is in the middling classes that the freedom, the intelligence, and the industry of a country reside. The higher class may be very intelligent, but can never be very numerous; and being above the feeling of want, except in a few instances, (where nature has endowed the wealthy with innate good qualities,) there is nothing to be expected or obtained of them, {111} towards the general good.
From the working and laborious classes, again, little is to be expected. They fill the part assigned to them when they perform their duty to themselves and families; and they have neither leisure, nor other means of contributing to general prosperity as public men;
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{110} In France, the richest subject under the crown was a prince of the blood, &c.
{111} In this case, the English form of government is good, because, it not only hinders any man from forgetting that he is a man, but whenever there is any ambition, no one in this country can rise above the necessity of acting with, and feeling for, their inferiors, of whom they sometimes have to ask favours, which they never do under a pure monarchy.
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they, indeed, pay more than their share of taxes in almost every country; {112} but they cannot directly, even by election, participate in the government of the country.