157 Under Pericles, the Athenian treasury of the state contained at most 9,700 talents. (_Thucyd._ II, 13.) On the other hand, Alexander the Great had a treasure of 180,000 talents accumulated in the citadel of Ecbatana. (_Strabo_, XV, 731); Ptolomy II. left after him 740,000 talents. (_Appian._ præf. 10, _Droysen_, Geschichte des Hellenismus II, 44 ff.) In Nero’s time there was many a freedman’s daughter who owned a looking glass worth a greater sum than the senate had appropriated as a dowry to the daughter of the great Scipio. (_Seneca_, Quæst. Natur. I, 17. Compare Cons, ad Helviam, 12.) _McCulloch_ says that an intelligent despotism can enrich a nation as well as freedom. (In his Discourse on the Rise, etc. of Polit. Econ., 1825, 77 seq.) _ 158 Bacon_ (Sermones, 56) says that youthful states distinguish themselves specially by their warlike instincts; mature states in literature; old and decaying ones in industry and commerce. _Davenant_ very happily remarks, that the development of commerce among a people has an ambiguous value. It, indeed, increases wealth, but, at the same time, it may introduce luxury, covetousness and fraud, destroy virtue, do away with simplicity of manners and customs, and then it inevitably ends in internal or external slavery. (Works II, 275.) The simplicity of the patriarchal state, however, cannot last always, if for no other reason, because of the emulation of foreign nations. (1, 348, ff.) The impoverishment of even the wealthiest nation is certainly inevitable when its morality declines. It is especially true, that the public economy of a people can be prosperous only where political liberty obtains, and this, independent of the fact that wealth without freedom has no value. (II, 336 ff., 380, ff., 285.) According to _Ferguson_, private wealth, honestly acquired, used rightly and with moderation, managed with a sense of independence, may be to those who possess it, an element of self-confidence and of liberty, provided they loosen their purse strings not through vanity or for their personal gratification, but for commendable party purposes. But in periods of decay, even a greater amount of wealth is very far from producing these results. (History of Civil Society, VI, 5.) _Whately_, on the contrary, maintains that only personal wealth—never national wealth—has a disastrous influence on morals. Lectures, No. 2. 159 “The method of a science is of much greater importance than any individual discovery, however wonderful.” (_Cuvier._)