attempted to be forced into an analogy are not founded in the same classes of existence. Individuals are physical beings, subject to laws universal and invariable; but commonwealths are not physical, but moral essences. They are artificial combinations, and, in their proximate efficient cause, the arbitrary productions of the human mind. We are not yet acquainted with the laws which necessarily influence that kind of work, made by that kind of agent. There is not, in the physical order, a distinct cause by which any of those fabrics must necessarily grow, flourish, and decay; nor, indeed, in my opinion, does the moral world produce any thing more determinate on that subject than what may serve as an amusement (liberal indeed, and ingenious, but still only an amusement) for speculative men. I doubt whether the history of mankind is yet complete enough, if ever it can be so, to furnish grounds for a sure theory on the internal causes, which necessarily affect the fortune of a state. I am far from denying the operation of such causes, but they are infinitely uncertain, and much more obscure, and much more difficult to trace than the foreign causes that tend to depress, and, sometimes, overwhelm society." The writer who has thus expressed his scepticism on this sort of inquiry, speaks, at the same time, of the im-[end of page #vi] portance of distinguishing between accidental and permanent causes. He doubts whether the history of mankind is complete enough, or, if ever it can be so, to furnish grounds for a sure theory, on the internal causes which necessarily affect the fortune of a state. Thus, he not only admits the existence of permanent causes, but says, clearly, that it is from history they are discoverable, if ever their discovery can be accomplished. This is going as far as we could wish, and, as for the sure theory, we join issue with him in despairing of ever obtaining one that will deserve the name of sure. The meaning of the word, sure, in this place, appears to be intended in a sense peculiarly strict. It seems to imply a theory, that would be certain in its application to those vicissitudes and fluctuations to which nations are liable, and not merely to explaining their rise and decline. As to such fluctuations, it would be absurd to enter into any theory about them; they depend on particular combinations of circumstances, too infinite, in variety, to be imagined, or subjected to any general law, and of too momentary an operation to be foreseen.