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LETTER XV. 
AMBITION is a virtue or a vice as 
its object is juft or unjuft. In Alex- 
ander gut tffluat infelix angujlo limite mundi; 
in Csefar, in Lewis XIV. the object of their 
battles was power and dominion, to which 
they had no juft claim: the firft and laft 
trampled on the univerfal law of nations 5 
Caefar broke the facred laws of civil com- 
pact. But the ambition to excel in poetry, 
in mufic, in painting, in mathematics; or 
to command an army, a fleet, or even to go- 
vern the ftate, is a virtue; not becaufe it 
may raife an individual, but becaufe the 
emulation of many individuals muft even- 
tually benefit the community. In abfolute 
monarchies, fubjects rife to power more fre- 
quently on the wings of vice, than of vir- 
tue; of intreague, than of abilities. In ari- 
flocratical or democratical governments, 
ambitious, cunning, refolute men, without 
probity or abilities, often rule the ftate. 
Why? Becaufe a republic is a body with- 
out a head : it wants that fupreme executive 
1 3 power a 
