This is the case with nations sunk in prosperity.
{20} Why men should have been less tenacious to keep that which is fairly theirs, than rapaciously to obtain that which is not, is a strange thing; but nothing is more certain; and the effects of that propensity are very great, and its existence very general. In the ruin of nations, it is a most active and powerful cause.
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nerally traced as the causes. In those ancient nations any considerable degree of luxury and military success were incompatible with each other; but, in the present age, the case is greatly altered. Military discipline is not near so severe as formerly, and bodily strength has but little effect, while the engines of war can only be procured by those resources which wealth affords; by this means, the decline of nations is, at least, now become a less natural and slower progress than formerly; the operations of war have now a quite different tendency from what they formerly had, and this effect is produced by the introduction of cannon, and a different mode of attack and defence; to carry on which, a very considerable degree of wealth is necessary. {21}
In former times, the character and situation of the people, the object they had in view, their bravery and the skill of their leaders, did every thing; but now the skill of leaders and the command of money are the chief objects; for there is not sufficient difference between any two nations in Europe as to counterbalance those: and, indeed, (except so far as military skill is accidental,) it is to be found principally in nations who have a sufficient degree of wealth to exercise it and call it into action.
We shall see that the first revolutions in the world were effected by the natural strength, energy, and bravery of poor nations triumphing over those that were less hardy, in consequence of the enjoyment of wealth, until the time of the Romans; who, like other nations, first triumphed by means of superior energy and bravery; and, afterwards by making war a trade, continued, by having regular standing armies, to conquer the nations who had only temporary levies, or militias, to fight in their defence.
The triumph of poor nations, over others in many respects their superiors, continued during the middle ages, but the wealth acquired by certain nations then was not wrested from them by war, but by an accidental and unforeseen change in the channel through which it
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{21} An idea has gone abroad, since the successes of the French armies, that money is not necessary to war, even in the present times. It will be shewn, in its proper place, that the French armies were maintained at very great expense, and that a poor country could not have done what France did.