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governments of countries that are wealthy have no occasion, like Peter the Great, or the founders of new states, to create new institutions, and eternally try to ameliorate, they ought to be very carefully and constantly employed in preventing those good things that they enjoy from escaping their grasp, so far as it depends upon interior arrangement. Exterior causes are not within their power to regulate, therefore they should be the more attentive to those that are; and, though exterior causes are out of their dominion, yet, sometimes, by wise interior regulations, the evil effects of exterior ones may be prevented. Nothing of all this can be done, however, until the government rises above the routine business of the day, and until all the necessary and pressing business is got over. The first thing, then, for a government is to extricate itself from the situation of one who struggles with necessity, after which, but not before, it may study what is beneficial, and of permanent utility.
So far it would appear all nations are situated alike, with regard to the general tendency to decay; {147} and so far all of them may be guided by general rules, but as to the particular manner of applying those rules, it must depend on the peculiar circumstances of the nation to which they are meant to be applied.
In general, revenue has become the great object with modern nations: and, as their rulers have not ventured to tax the necessaries of the people to any high degree, but have laid their vices, rather than their wants, under contribution, the revenue-system, (as it may be called,) tends to make a government encourage expensive vice, by which it profits, and check innocent enjoyment, by which it has nothing to gain. This is a terrible, but it is a very prevalent system; it is immoral, inhuman, and impolitic.
So far as this goes, a government, instead of checking, accelerates the decline of a people; but, as this is not a natural cause of decline, as it is not universal or necessary, it is to be considered with due
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{147} The Chinese, and, in general, the nations of Asia have not been considered as included in this inquiry. The Chinese, in particular, are a people in a permanent situation: they do not increase in riches, and they seem to have no tendency to decline. Their laws and mode of education and living remain the same.
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regard to particular circumstances. In general, we may say, that, in place of inviting the lower classes to pass their time in drinking, by the innumerable receptacles that there are for those who are addicted to that vice, every impediment should be put in the way. Drinking is a vice, the disposition to which grows with its gratification; most other avocations (for drinking in moderation is only such) have no tendency of the sort. Those enjoyments which have a tendency to degenerate into vice should be kept under some check; those which have no such tendency ought to be encouraged; for, where the main and general mass of the population of a country is corrupted, it is impossible to prevent its decline. If it remains uncorrupted, the matter is very easy, or, more properly, it may be said that prosperity is the natural consequence.