But this is all a pretence;--the wicked corrupters of mankind have no such views of human felicity, nor would they be contented with it; they want to intrigue and to lead; and their patriarchal life answers the same purpose of tickling the fancy as the Arcadia of the poets. Horace shows the frivolity of these declamations, without formally enouncing the moral, in his pretty Ode, Beatus ille qui procul negotiis. The usurer, after expatiating on this Arcadian felicity, hurries away to change, and puts his whole cash again out to usury. Equally ineffective are the declamations of Cosmo-politism on a mind filled with selfish passions;--they just serve it for a subterfuge.--The ties of ordinary life are broken in the first place, and the Citizen of the World is a wolf of the desart. The unhappy consequence is, that the natural progress of liberty is retarded. Had this _ignis fatuus_ not appeared and misled us, the improvements which true Illumination has really produced, the increase in sciences and arts, and the improvement in our estimate of life and happiness, would have continued to work silently and gradually in all nations; and those which are less fortunate in point of government would also have improved, by little and little, without losing any sensible portion of their present enjoyments in the possession of riches, or honours, or power. Those pretensions would gradually have come to balance each other, and true liberty, such as Britons enjoy, might have taken place over all. Instead of this, the inhabitants of every state are put into a situation where every individual is alarmed and injured by the success of another, because all pre-eminence is criminal. Therefore there must be perpetual jealousy and struggle. Princes are now alarmed, since they see the aim of the lower classes, and they repent of their former liberal concessions. All parties maintain a sullen distance and reserve;--the people become unruly, and the sovereign hard-hearted; so that liberty, such as _can_ be enjoyed in peace, is banished from the country.