They would defend their country not as her children, but as her masters; as a property, not as a state. There may be the same pride and luxury in other classes of men, but they are accompanied with other feelings, and drawn from other sources. It has been a customary compliment to consider those as best entitled to come forward conspicuously in defence of their country who had what is called the greatest _stake_ in it. This is perhaps true of the real, old hereditary nobility and gentry, of those who find their names enrolled high in the annals of their country, whose affections have grown to her soil as it were in a long course of centuries, who have an interest in looking forward to posterity, and a pride in looking back upon their ancestors, who have not only present possessions and advantages to defend, but feelings of inveterate prejudice and inbred honour to defend them. The loss of respect, or of their former privileges, is a change which to them appears like something out of the course of nature, to which no force or accidental circumstances can ever reconcile them. They are also men of liberal education; and this is a great point gained. There is certainly this advantage in a classical education, if not counteracted by other causes, that it gives men long views; it accustoms the mind to take an interest in things foreign to itself, to love virtue for its own sake, to prefer fame to life, and glory to riches, and to fix our thoughts on the great and permanent instead of narrow and selfish objects. It teaches us to believe that there is something really great and excellent in the world, surviving all the shocks of accident and fluctuations of opinion, and to feel respect for that which is made venerable by its nature and antiquity instead of that low and servile dread which bows only to present power and upstart authority. It is hard to find in minds otherwise formed either a delicate sense of honour, or an inflexible regard to truth and justice. But the spirit of trade is the very reverse of all this. It is the principle of this set of men to cry ‘Long life to the conqueror,’ to feel a contempt for all obligations that are not founded in self-interest, and to consider all generous pursuits and the hope of unfading renown as romance and folly. ‘Virtue is not their habit, they are out of themselves in any course of conduct recommended only by conscience and glory.’ They would not give a hundred hogsheads of sugar or a half-year’s income for all the posthumous fame that was ever acquired in the world. If things should unhappily ever come to extremities, they are not the people who will retrieve them, either by their exertions or example. They have neither grand and elevated views, nor the warm, genuine feelings of nature. They have no _principles_ of action. Irresolute, temporizing, every thing is with them made a subject of selfish calculation. Their friendships as well as their enmities are the creatures of the occasion.