--- {38} This is exactly one of the charges brought against the Carthaginians in the last Punic war. -=- [end of page #40] them, which was not an act of the will, must have been occasioned by some cause inherent in their situation, which had gradually changed. In searching for this cause we shall be very much assisted, and the conclusion will be rendered more certain, by observing in what particular circumstances, they resembled other nations who had undergone a similar changes. =sic= In doing this, we find the inquiry wonderfully abridged indeed, and the conclusion reduced nearly to a mathematical certainty, by observing that the change of maxims, that is to say, the change in ways of thinking, whenever it has taken place, has followed soon after the introduction of wealth and refinement, which change manners, and consequently maxims. Wealth, acquired by conquest, was incompatible with that austere virtue and independent principle which form the basis of republican prosperity. As all public employments were obtained by the favour of the people; and as all wealth and power were obtained by the channels of public employment; bribery and corruption, which cannot take place in a poor republic, became very common in this wealthy one; so that this republican government, so constituted, lost all those advantages it possessed while it was poor. Had the murderers of Julius Caesar, either understood the real corruption of the commonwealth, or foreseen that a new master would rise up, they would never have destroyed that admirable man. Had Rome not been ready to receive a master, Julius Caesar, with all his ambition, would never have grasped at the crown. In nations that obtain wealth by commerce, manufactures, or any other means than by conquests, the corruption of the state is not naturally so great. The wealth originates in the people, and not in the state; and, besides that they are more difficult to purchase, there is less means of doing so, and less inducement; neither can they, being the sources of wealth themselves, become so idle and corrupted. {39} --- {39} The wild and ungovernable direction that the French revolution took originated chiefly in the creation of assignats, which not only exempted the people from taxes at first, but had the effect of producing an artificial and temporary degree of wealth, that [end of page #41] enabled vast numbers, either in the pay of others, or at their own expense, to make cabals and politics their whole study. Rome never was in such a licentious state, because, before the citizens got into that situation, the military power was established. -=-