In Europe, where mercenary and disciplined armies are everywhere formed, and ready to traverse the earth, where, like a flood pent up by slender banks, they are only restrained by political forms, or a temporary balance of power; if the sluices should break, what inundations may we not expect to behold? Effeminate kingdoms and empires are spread from the sea of Corea to the Atlantic ocean. Every state, by the defeat of its troops, may be turned into a province; every army opposed in the field today may be hired to-morrow; and every victory gained, may give the accession of a new military force to the victor. The Romans, with inferior arts of communication by sea and land, maintained their dominion in a considerable part of Europe, Asia, and Africa, over fierce and intractable nations: what may not the fleets and armies of Europe, with the access they have by commerce to every part of the world, and the facility of their conveyance, effect, if that ruinous maxim should prevail, that the grandeur of a nation is to be estimated from the extent of its territory; or, that the interest of any particular people consists in reducing their neighbours to servitude? SECTION VI OF CIVIL LIBERTY If war, either for depredation or defence, were the principal object of nations, every tribe would, from its earliest state, aim at the condition of a Tartar horde; and in all its successes would hasten to the grandeur of a Tartar empire. The military leader would supersede the civil magistrate; and preparations to fly with all their possessions, or to pursue with all their forces, would in every society make the sum of their public arrangements. He who first, on the banks of the Wolga, or the Jenisca, had taught the Scythian to mount the horse, to move his cottage on wheels, to harass his enemy alike by his attacks and his flights, to handle at full speed the lance and the bow, and when beat from his ground, to leave his arrows in the wind to meet his pursuer; he who had taught his countrymen to use the same animal for every purpose of the dairy, the shambles, and the field of battle; would be esteemed the founder of his nation; or like Ceres and Bacchus among the Greeks, would be invested with the honours of a god, as the reward of his useful inventions. Amidst such institutions, the names and achievements of Hercules and Jason might have been transmitted to posterity; but those of Lycurgus or Solon, the heroes of political society, could have gained no reputation, either fabulous or real, in the records of fame.