must appear. They come
purified from the fire. My business is not with them. Having entered a
protest against all objections from these quarters, I may the more
freely inquire, from history and experience, how far policy has
contributed in all times to alleviate those evils which Providence, that
perhaps has designed us for a state of imperfection, has imposed; how
far our physical skill has cured our constitutional disorders; and
whether it may not have introduced new ones, curable perhaps by no
skill.

In looking over any state to form a judgment on it, it presents itself
in two lights; the external, and the internal. The first, that relation
which it bears in point of friendship or enmity to other states. The
second, that relation which its component parts, the governing and the
governed, bear to each other. The first part of the external view of all
states, their relation as friends, makes so trifling a figure in
history, that I am very sorry to say, it affords me but little matter on
which to expatiate. The good offices done by one nation to its
neighbor;[8] the support given in public distress; the relief afforded
in general calamity; the protection granted in emergent danger; the
mutual return of kindness and civility, would afford a very ample and
very pleasing subject for history. But, alas! all the history of all
times, concerning all nations, does not afford matter enough to fill ten
pages, though it should be spun out by the wire-drawing amplification of
a Guicciardini himself. The glaring side is that of enmity. War is the
matter which fills all history, and consequently the only or almost the
only view in which we can see the external of political society is in a
hostile shape; and the only actions to which we have always seen, and
still see all of them intent, are such as tend to the destruction of one
another. "War," says Machiavel, "ought to be the only study of a
prince"; and by a prince, he means every sort of state, however
constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider
peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and
furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the
conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine, that war was the
state of nature; and truly, if a man judged of the individuals of our
race by their conduct when united and packed into nations and kingdoms,
he might imagine that every sort of virtue was unnatural an