XIII. The force of custom is amazingly powerful, for it is capable of not only making the greatest asperities sufferable, but by peoples being familiarized to them, it also causes their being satisfied under them. He who was not well apprized of this truth, would be led to think what passed between Esteban King of Poland, and the Peasants of Livonia, incredible. This glorious Prince having observed, that these poor people were cruelly and very ill-treated by the nobles of the province, convened them together, and after condoling with them on their misery, told them, he proposed to make their subjection less severe and easier to be tolerated, by restraining the exercise of power in the nobility, within more mild and moderate bounds; but wonderful to relate, instead of seeming sensible of his benevolence, and embracing the offer he made them, they threw themselves at his feet, and begged he would not alter their customs, with which, through long usage, they were quite satisfied. What will not the force of habit conquer, if it is capable of making tyranny agreeable! Join to this, the circumstance of the Muscovite women, who are not happy or contented, unless their husbands, without their giving them any occasion for it, beat or cudgel them every day, regarding this unprovoked ill-treatment, as a token of their great love for them. XIV. We may add to the foregoing remarks, that an uniformity of language, religion, and customs, makes the intercourse with our countrymen grateful and pleasing, as a diversity in those matters, makes the society of strangers aukward and unentertaining. Our particular connections and personal friendships also, tend to produce the same effect; and generally speaking, the love of convenience, and of that private ease and happiness, which every man finds in his own country, is what attracts him to, and retains him in it, and not the love of the country itself. He who should experience better personal accommodation in another region, would do as St. Peter did, who, as soon as he found himself happily situated on Mount Tabor, resolved to fix his lasting abode on that eminence, and to abandon for good and all the valley in which he was born. SECT. III.