692 
that to excel in them requires rather 
training than education, and is not a mark 
of refinement but of the want of it; that 
they incroach on the purity of do- 
mestic morals and probably on the hu- 
manity of the general character ; that 
in all families the idle boy is very ra- 
tionally flung into the army; and that 
the more it is left to the lowest classes 
of the people to supply-first soldiers, 
and then officers from the ranks, the 
more robust, bold, and trustworthy the 
troops. 
Poets and historians by applauding 
military exploits, which mostly consist 
in employing a hundred men to beat 
ninety, have given a fon and a reputation 
to soldiering, which prompts nations to 
the most destructive and rebarbarizing 
actions, which bodies of men can com- 
mit. Let the army take its natural 
place as the basis not the pinnacle of ci- 
wvilized society. 
To productive industry on the con- 
contrary publicopinion assigns aninferior 
rank and a secondary value. Yet where 
ure we to seek the chosen nests of human 
happiness:and culture but in the cities of 
the industrious, and the commercial. 
To Tyre, Corinth, Athens, and Alexan- 
dria, not to the Sparta or the early Rome 
of the ancient world, we turn for the 
diffusion of ease and the condensation of 
magnificence, or for the far-fetched re- 
finements of sensual and intellectual 
luxury. It is to Barcelona, to Florence, 
to Venice, that the modern world is in- 
debted for: the revival of the civilizing 
arts and thé restoration of literary en- 
quiry.. It is to Lisbon, to Amsterdam, 
to London, that the remotest shores of 
earth owe their novel concatenation and 
their prospering intercourse. 
Nor is, commerce. less favourable in 
detail to the best interests of society than 
on.the collective scale of estimation. 
‘Commercial men can afford to make early 
and disinterested marriages. They must 
put to hazard so much more than a-wite’s 
dower, that it is less important to their 
prosperity to wed a fortune, than to wed 
a capital unincumbered with settlements 
and jointures. What is the consequence? 
that the:most accomplished and merito- 
rious Women in the country are every 
where the wives of merchants, the women 
who are selected not for their property 
but for their properties. The domestic 
happiness and interior elegance which 
résults is obvious: whoever compares 
the families of our city-gentlemen with 
COMMERCE. 
those of our country-gentlemen must be 
struck with the far superior character of 
the former. 
There is scarcely a peculiarity in the 
French character, which may not be 
traced to the military education of their 
exemplary class, the nobility. At home 
and by themselves they lived, as at lodg- 
ings, hardly attentive to personal clean- 
liness, not at all to that of the apart- 
ment. Every thing had the air of a 
make-shift, nothing of comfort: ma- 
dame received you where she was pow- 
dering, monsieur in his great coat and 
slippers. To appear well attired and 
escorted at balls and public places, were, 
as in a garrison-town, the pivots of so. 
licitude. Any thing was read, even phi- 
losophy, if it assumed the form of ‘a li- 
centious novel. The nuptial bed was in« 
vaded with as little ceremony as the 
women’s tent ina camp. Courage, ho- 
nour, the manners and the prate which 
conciliate for the hour—these were vir- 
tues; but probity and fidelity seemed 
qualities, which told less among men, 
who are monthly shifting their quarters. 
In legislation again the spirit of the 
soldier is fatal to liberty and justice, 
The law of nations begins with the ma- 
ritime code of Rhodes, the consequence 
of commerce. The earliest attempts of 
the Romans at equity and precision in 
the nicer cases of property begin with 
the visit of Hadrian to Alexandria, and 
with what he learnt there of commercial 
jurisprudence. What of constitutional 
liberty there is in Europe, has all begun 
in the corporation-towns, whose elective 
administrations all grew out of the guilds — 
and purses.of the tradesmen, and whose 
charters were all purchased of the nobi- 
lity, for the purpose of instituting intel- 
ligent and impartial jurisdictions, such 
as parliaments of land owners knew not 
how to bestow. ‘Vhe rudiments of civi- 
lization were scattered in the north by 
the Hanseatic cities, who preserved along 
the edges of Europe some attention to 
refinement, while the middle zone was. 
trampled into a desert by the feuds of 
barons, or the wars of kings. 
In order to increase the commerce of — 
the country, and it is capable of great 
increase, an important step is to diffuse 
a knowledge of the objects with which 
it is most conversant, and of the’ places 
to which it most frequently has recourse. 
No sudden change’ can ever be effected 
in the habits of nations: a demand onee 
begun may be increased or diminished 5 
