conferred upon persons of that stamp only, whilst honesty and publick virtue will be standing marks of political reprobation. Common justice will be denied to the latter in all controverted elections, whilst the laws will be strained, or over-ruled in favour of the former. Luxury is the certain forerunner of corruption, because it is the certain parent of indigence: consequently a state so circumstanced will always furnish an ample supply of proper instruments for faction. For as luxury consists in an inordinate gratification of the sensual passions,[279] the more the passions are indulged they grow the more importunately craving, until the greatest fortune must sink under their insatiable demands. Thus luxury necessarily produces corruption. For as wealth is essentially necessary to the support of luxury, wealth will be the universal object of desire in every state where luxury prevails: consequently all those who have dissipated their private fortunes in the purchase of pleasure, will be ever ready to enlist in the cause of faction for the wages of corruption. A taste for pleasure immoderately indulged, quickly strengthens into habit, eradicates every principle of honour and virtue, and gets possession of the whole man. And the more expensive such a man is in his pleasures, the greater lengths he will run for the acquisition of wealth for the end of profusion. Thus the contagion will become so universal, that nothing but an uncommon share of virtue can preserve the possessor from infection. For when once the idea of respect and homage is annexed to the possession of wealth alone,[280] honour, probity, every virtue and every amiable quality will be held cheap in comparison, and looked upon as awkward and quite unfashionable. But as the spirit of liberty will yet exist in some degree in a state which retains the name of freedom, even though the manners of that state should be generally depraved, an opposition will arise from those virtuous citizens, who know the value of their birthright, _liberty_, and will never submit tamely to the chains of faction. Force then will be called in to the aid of corruption,[281] and a standing army will be introduced. A military government will be established upon the ruins of the civil, and all commands and employments will be disposed of at the arbitrary will of lawless power. The people will be fleeced to pay for their own fetters, and doomed, like the cattle, to unremitting toil and drudgery for the support of their tyrannical masters. Or, if the outward form of civil government should be permitted to remain, the people will be compelled to give a sanction to tyranny by their own suffrages, and to elect oppressors instead of protectors.