These are the terms to which even the stubborn heart of the barbarian has been reduced, in consequence of a despotism he himself had established; and men have in that low state of the commercial arts, in Europe, as well as in Asia, tasted of political slavery. When interest prevails in every breast, the sovereign and his party cannot escape the infection: he employs the force with which he is intrusted to turn his people into a property, and to command their possessions for his profit or his pleasure. If riches are by any people made the standard of good or of evil, let them beware of the powers they intrust to their prince. "With the Suiones," says Tacitus, "riches are in high esteem; and this people are accordingly disarmed, and reduced to slavery." [Footnote: De moribus Germanorum.] It is in this woful condition that mankind, being slavish, interested, insidious, deceitful, and bloody, bear marks, if not of the least curable, surely of the most lamentable sort of corruption. [Footnote: Chardin's Travels.] Among them, war is the mere practice of rapine, to enrich the individual; commerce is turned into a system of snares and impositions; and government by turns oppressive or weak. It were happy for the human race, when guided by interest, and not governed by laws, that being split into nations of a moderate extent, they found in every canton some natural bar to its farther enlargement, and met with occupation enough in maintaining their independence, without being able to extend their dominion. There is not disparity of rank, among men in rude ages, sufficient to give their communities the form of legal monarchy; and in a territory of considerable extent, when united under one head, the warlike and turbulent spirit of its inhabitants seems to require the bridle of despotism and military force. Where any degree of freedom remains, the powers of the prince are, as they were in most of the rude monarchies of Europe, extremely precarious, and depend chiefly on his personal character: where, on the contrary, the powers of the prince are above the control of his people, they are likewise above the restrictions of justice. Rapacity and terror become the predominant motives of conduct, and form the character of the only parties into which mankind are divided; that of the oppressor, and that of the oppressed.