XXXIV. I say once more, that I do not condemn any innocent or moderate affection for our native land. A love extremely soft and tender, is better suited to women, and more proper for children just rising up in the world, than for men; and therefore I am of opinion, the divine Homer humanizes Ulysses to a degree of excess, when he paints him, amidst all the regales of Pheacia, panting and pining, to see the smoke arise on the mountains of Ithaca, his own country: _Exoptans oculis surgentem cernere fumum_ _Natalis terræ._ This tenderness in one of the wisest of the Greeks was very puerile; but with all, there is not much inconvenience in viewing with tenderness the smoke of one’s country, provided the smoke does not blind the eyes of him who looks at it. Let him view the smoke of his own country; but alas, do not let him prefer it to the light and splendour of foreign ones; but this is what we see every day. He who by being placed at the head of an eminent department, has the disposal of various employments at his pleasure, can scarce find any persons properly qualified for those employments, but people of his own country. In vain it is represented to him, that these men are unfit to fill the post, and that there are others better qualified. He finds the smoke of his country so grateful an aromatick, that he would abandon for it the most brilliant lights of other places. O how strangely does this smoke blind men’s eyes! How wonderfully does it disorder and affect their heads! XXXV. In truth, some sin in this particular with their eyes wide open; I speak of those, who with the view of forming a party to support their authority, promote as many of their countrymen as they possibly can, without paying the least attention to merit. This is not manifesting their love to their country, but to themselves, and is benefiting their own soil, as the earth is benefited by the labour of the husbandman, who does not bestow it with a view of improving the land, but of advantaging himself. These are open and declared enemies of a republic, because it being next to impossible, that one district can furnish people sufficiently qualified for such a variety of employments, the places are filled with unworthy objects; this, if it is not the greatest evil that can befall a state, at least ultimately disposes towards producing such an evil.