Virtue was never yet held in much honour and esteem in a monarchical country. It is the inclination and the interest of courtiers and kings to bring it into disrepute; and they are but too successful in the attempt.
Virtue is, in their conception, arrogant, intrusive, unmanageable and stubborn.
It is an assumed outside, by which those who pretend to it, intend to gratify their rude tempers, or their secret views. Within the circle of monarchy, virtue is always regarded with dishonourable incredulity. The philosophical system, which affirms self-love to be the first mover of all our actions, and the falsity of human virtues, is the growth of these countries.
Why is it that the language of integrity and public spirit is constantly regarded among us as hypocrisy? It was not always thus. It was not till the usurpation of Caesar, that books were written, by the tyrant and his partisans, to prove that Cato was no better than a snarling pretender.
There is a further consideration which has seldom been adverted to upon this subject, but which seems to be of no inconsiderable importance. In our definition of justice, it appeared that our debt to our fellow men extended to all the efforts we could make for their welfare, and all the relief we could supply to their necessities. Not a talent do we possess, not a moment of time, not a shilling of property, for which we are not responsible at the tribunal of the public, which we are not obliged to pay into the general bank of common advantage. Of every one of these things there is an employment which is best, and that best justice obliges us to select. But how extensive is the consequence of this principle with respect to the luxuries and ostentation of human life? How many of these luxuries are there that would stand the test, and approve themselves, upon examination, to be the best objects upon which our property could be employed?Chapter ill it often come out to be true that hundreds of individuals ought to be subjected to the severest and most incessant labour, that one man may spend in idleness what would afford to the general mass ease, leisure and consequently wisdom?
Whoever frequents the habitations of the luxurious will speedily be infected with the vices of luxury. The ministers and attendants of a sovereign, accustomed to the trappings of magnificence, will turn with disdain from the merit that is obscured with the clouds of adversity. In vain may virtue plead, in vain may talents solicit distinction, if poverty seem, to the fastidious sense of the man in place, to envelop them, as it were, with its noisome effluvia. The very lacquey knows how to repel unfortunate merit from the great man's door.
Here then we are presented with the lesson which is, loudly and perpetually, read through all the haunts of monarchy. Money is the great requisite, for the want of which nothing can atone. Distinction, the homage and esteem of mankind, are to be bought, not earned. The rich man need not trouble himself to invite them, they come unbidden to his surly door. Rarely indeed does it happen that there is any crime that gold cannot expiate, any baseness and meanness of character that wealth cannot shroud in oblivion. Money therefore is the only object worthy of your pursuit, and it is of little importance by what sinister and unmanly means, so it be but obtained.
It is true that virtue and talents do not stand in need of the great man's assistance, and might, if they did but know their worth, repay his scorn with a just and enlightened pity. But, unfortunately, they are often ignorant of their strength, and adopt the errors they see universally espoused.
Were it otherwise, they would indeed be happier, but the general manners would perhaps remain the same. The general manners are fashioned by the form and spirit of the national government; and if, in extraordinary cases, they cease to yield to the mould, they speedily change the form to which they fail to submit.
The evils indeed that arise out of avarice, an inordinate admiration of wealth and an intemperate pursuit of it are so obvious that they have constituted a perpetual topic of lamentation and complaint. The object in this place is to consider how far they are extended and aggravated by a monarchical government, that is, by a constitution the very essence of which is to accumulate enormous wealth upon a single head, and to render the ostentation of splendour the established instrument for securing honour and veneration. The object is to consider in what degree the luxury of courts, the effeminate softness of favourites, the system, never to be separated from the monarchical form, of putting men's approbation and good word at a price, of individuals buying the favour of government, and government buying the favour of individuals, is injurious to the moral improvement of mankind. As long as the unvarying practice of courts is cabal, and as long as the unvarying tendency of cabal is to bear down talents, and discourage virtue, to recommend cunning in the room of sincerity, a servile and supple disposition in preference to firmness and inflexibility, a pliant and selfish morality as better than an ingenuous one, and the study of the red book of promotion rather than the study of the general welfare, so long will monarchy be the bitterest and most potent of all the adversaries of the true interests of mankind.
