private avarice, as well as that of the publick. The oppressions of the Carthaginian generals in Spain lost them all their allies. The wiser policy of Scipio attached those allies unalterably to the Romans. The exactions of their rapacious governors in the African provinces, were the sources of perpetual revolts, upon the approach of any invader, from a desire of changing masters. When Scipio landed, he was joined by all those provinces, who looked upon the Romans as their deliverers. As soon as luxury had introduced avarice and corruption amongst the Romans, their generals and governours pursued the same destructive maxims, which was one leading cause of the final ruin of both the western and eastern empires. There cannot be a stronger proof of a weak or a corrupt administration, than when indigent and necessitous men are appointed to the government of distant provinces, from no other motive than party merit, and with no other view than to raise a fortune at the expense of the people. Whether the wretched and defenceless condition in which the French found our colonies at the beginning of this war, ought not to be ascribed chiefly to this cause, is a question I shall wave at present. Because the evils we have already suffered from former misconduct, will, I hope, be now removed, by a total alteration of measures under an able and honest administration. It is remarkable, that not one of the historians who reproach the Carthaginians with corruption, were ever able to accuse them of luxury and effeminacy. The Carthaginians, to their immortal honour, stand single upon the records of history, “the only people in the universe, upon whom immense wealth was never able to work its usual effects.” The Romans, corrupted by wealth, quickly lost all pretensions both to publick and private virtue, and from a race of heroes, degenerated into a nation of the most abject slaves. The Carthaginian virtue was so far from degenerating that it shone brighter in the last period of their history, than in any of the former. Even the behaviour of their women in that long and brave defence of their city against the whole Roman power, equalled, or rather exceeded, that of the Roman matrons in those times, when they were most celebrated for publick virtue. When the Romans were masters of the city, one small part only excepted, and that part actually in flames, the generous wife of Asdrubal the chief commander,[349] closed the scene by as desperate an act of heroick bravery, as can be met with in history. After she had upbraided her husband as a coward and a traitor for submitting to Scipio, she declared her determined resolution of dying free, and not surviving the fate of her country. She first stabbed both her children, and threw them into the flames; then leaped in after their bodies, and buried herself in the ruins of Carthage.