But how debasing does this form of government become, when the monarch, either from policy or inclination, shuns the talent and virtue of the country, addresses himself to the lowest, the most vulgar and most selfish passions of man, and draws around him into the high places of the government men taken from the lowest and most despised functions of life. "Kings," says Burke, "are naturally lovers of low company; they are so elevated above all the rest of mankind that they must look upon all their subjects as on a level." They are apt, unless they be wise men, to hate the talent and virtue of the country, and attach themselves to those vile instruments who will consent to flatter their caprices, pander to their low and grovelling pleasures, and offer up to them the disgusting incense of sycophantic fawning adulation. Every man of talent and virtue is an obstacle in the path of such a monarch as this--he holds up to his view a most hateful mirror. When such monarchs as these are on the throne, the government exercises the most withering influence on the intellect and virtue of the country. Science is dishonored and persecuted because she is virtuous, because she will consent to flatter neither the monarch on his throne nor his sycophantic courtier--she will consent to mingle in no degrading strife, nor does she bring up any reserve to the dishonest minister, either to swell his triumph or to break his fall. When men of rank thus sacrifice all ideas of dignity to an ambition without a useful and noble object, and work with low instruments and for low ends, the whole composition becomes low and base. Whilst Tiberius surrenders himself into the keeping of so vile a being as Sejanus--whilst Nero is fiddling and dancing, and Commodus in the arena with the gladiators--all that is noble and great in the empire must retire into the shade and seek for safety in solitude and obscurity. When Louis XI dismissed from the court those faithful nobles and distinguished citizens, who had stood by his father and saved the monarch and his throne in the hour of adversity, and filled their places with men taken from the lowest and meanest condition of life, with no other merit than that possessed by the eunuch guard of the Medio-Persian monarch, of adhering to the king, because despised by all the world besides, he conquered, for the time at least, the virtue, the chivalry, the real greatness of France. Well, then, may we say, in the emphatic language of England's most philosophic statesman, "Woe to the country which would madly and impiously reject the service of the talents and virtues, civil, military or religious, that are given to grace and to serve it; and would condemn to obscurity every thing formed to diffuse lustre and glory around a state. Woe to that country too, that considers a low education, a mean contracted view of things, a sordid, mercenary occupation, as a preferable title to command."