From the abuses of law and public institutions and _l'esprit du corps_, we run a very great risk; more indeed than under an arbitrary government or even a republic. These last are the dangers that most seriously threaten a nation living under a mixed government. As to the produce of the soil becoming unequal to the maintenance of a people addicted to luxurious habits, we have much also to fear from that: the operation is begun, and its effects will soon be most serious: they are already felt, and very visible. From taxation, unproductive and idle people, we have more to fear than most nations; and from an alteration in the manner of thinking, and persons and property leaving the nation, we have as much as any other nation, according to the degree of wealth that we possess; so that, upon the whole, the interior causes of decline are such as it is extremely necessary to guard against in the most attentive manner. In respect to the exterior causes, we are exempt entirely from some, from others we are not; and, in one case, we have exterior causes for hope that no nation ever yet had. The advancement of other nations, their enmity and envy, are full as likely to operate against this nation as against any other that ever existed; but as we owe none of our superiority to geographical situa- [end of page #192] tion like the Greek islands, the Delta of Egypt, and borders of the Mediterranean Sea, we run no risk of any discovery in geography, or in navigation, operating much to our disadvantage. We are not so far advanced before other nations in arts as to have any great reason to dread that their advancement will be our ruin; but still we must allow, that a number of external causes may combine to bring us to their level, when the effects of our present wealth may soon operate in reducing us under it. Since, then, commerce is the foundation of our wealth, and since our power, which is naval, is built upon commerce, let us begin with taking a view of its present situation. The increase of the trade of Britain to foreign parts, within these last fifteen years, though a very natural effect of the causes that have operated during that period, is not itself a natural increase, because the causes that produced it are uncommon, temporary, and unnatural. The East and West India trades have been both lost to France and Holland. The French, before the revolution, had a greater share of the West India trade than ever we had, and they could undersell us in foreign markets.