The circumstances which mainly contribute to produce this extraordinary tenacity of error and insensibility to truth, in the majority of mankind at all times and under all circumstances, are their general indifference to _distant_ effects, and their acute sense of _present_ burdens. If the danger is obvious and visible to the senses of all, and, above all, if it threatens immediate evil to all, the mass of men will often make incredible, almost superhuman efforts to avert it. But if it is distant and contingent only, and the remedies proposed to guard against it are attended with present burdens, however slight, it will in general be found that it is wholly impossible to make them do anything to guard against the impending evils. In the words of one who knew them well,[4] "they prefer any load of infamy, however great, to any burden of taxation, however light." They never will incur present expense to guard against future danger. It is for this reason that states in which the popular voice is all-powerful so often rush into foreign wars with scarcely any preparations, and are so often defeated by nations possessing far less vigour and fewer resources, but in whom the wisdom of a monarchical or aristocratic government has made an adequate provision in peace for the contingency of future hostilities. All the eloquence of Demosthenes, we know, failed to make the Athenian people take any steps to augment the national armaments, and they got the battle of Chæronea and subjugation by Philip in consequence. The English, in 1778, commenced the contest with their revolted American colonies with a regular army of 20,000 men, and they lost the colonies in consequence: they began the war with France in 1793 with 40,000 regular soldiers in the British empire, when their enemy had 1,200,000 men under arms; and it cost them a struggle of twenty years, and six hundred millions of debt incurred, to get the better of the necessary consequences of their infatuation. They starved down the establishment in India, and forbade all hostile preparations, even though it was a dominion won, and which could only be upheld, by the sword, till it was brought to the verge of destruction on the banks of the Sutlej; and the empire which disposed of the resources of 80,000,000 of subjects, owed its extrication from what seemed unavoidable ruin, only to a strange and unaccountable retreat of the enemy, resting on a population of 6,000,000 only, when victory was within their grasp. The Americans rushed into a contest with England in 1812 with a fleet of six frigates and an army of 8000 men; and the consequence was, that in two years their commerce was totally destroyed, their capital taken by a British division of 3500 men, and the general suffering would in six months have made the Northern States break of from the Union, had not England, weary of fighting and satiated with glory, sheathed her sword when the dissolution of the Union was within her power.