A Swiss, a Hollander, a Venetian nobleman, an English peer, a cardinal, and a count of the empire, were once disputing, on a journey, about the nature of their respective governments, and which of them deserved the preference: no one knew much about the matter; each remained in his own opinion without having any very distinct idea what that opinion was; and they returned without having come to any general conclusion; every one praising his own country from vanity, and complaining of it from feeling. What, then, is the destiny of mankind? Scarcely any great nation is governed by itself. Begin from the east, and take the circuit of the world. Japan closed its ports against foreigners from the well-founded apprehension of a dreadful revolution. China actually experienced such a revolution; she obeys Tartars of a mixed race, half Mantchou and half Hun. India obeys Mogul Tartars. The Nile, the Orontes, Greece, and Epirus are still under the yoke of the Turks. It is not an English race that reigns in England; it is a German family which succeeded to a Dutch prince, as the latter succeeded a Scotch family which had succeeded an Angevin family, that had replaced a Norman family, which had expelled a family of usurping Saxons. Spain obeys a French family; which succeeded to an Austrasian race, that Austrasian race had succeeded families that boasted of Visigoth extraction; these Visigoths had been long driven out by the Arabs, after having succeeded to the Romans, who had expelled the Carthaginians. Gaul obeys Franks, after having obeyed Roman prefects. The same banks of the Danube have belonged to Germans, Romans, Arabs, Slavonians, Bulgarians, and Huns, to twenty different families, and almost all foreigners. And what greater wonder has Rome had to exhibit than so many emperors who were born in the barbarous provinces, and so many popes born in provinces no less barbarous? Let him govern who can. And when any one has succeeded in his attempts to become master, he governs as he can. SECTION III. In 1769, a traveller delivered the following narrative: "I saw, in the course of my journey, a large and populous country, in which all offices and places were purchasable; I do not mean clandestinely, and in evasion of the law, but publicly, and in conformity to it. The right to judge, in the last resort, of the honor, property, and life of the citizen, was put to auction in the same manner as the right and property in a few acres of land. Some very high commissions in the army are conferred only on the highest bidder. The principal mystery of their religion is celebrated for the petty sum of three sesterces, and if the celebrator does not obtain this fee he remains idle like a porter without employment.