econd, and making a prince more
powerful and enterprising, several cities and provinces were united under
one monarch, and formed kingdoms of a greater or less extent, according to
the degree of ardour with which the victor had pushed his conquests.(51)

But among these princes were found some, whose ambition being too vast to
confine itself within a single kingdom, broke over all bounds, and spread
universally like a torrent, or the ocean; swallowed up kingdoms and
nations; and fancied that glory consisted in depriving princes of their
dominions, who had not done them the least injury; in carrying fire and
sword into the most remote countries, and in leaving every where bloody
traces of their progress! Such was the origin of those famous empires
which included a great part of the world.

Princes made a various use of victory, according to the diversity of their
dispositions or interests. Some, considering themselves as absolute
masters of the conquered, and imagining they were sufficiently indulged in
sparing their lives, bereaved them, as well as their children, of their
possessions, their country, and their liberty; subjected them to a most
severe captivity; employed them in those arts which are necessary for the
support of life, in the lowest and most servile offices of the house, in
the painful toils of the field; and frequently forced them, by the most
inhuman treatment, to dig in mines, and ransack the bowels of the earth,
merely to satiate their avarice; and hence mankind were divided into
freemen and slaves, masters and bondmen.

Others introduced the custom of transporting whole nations into new
countries, where they settled them, and gave them lands to cultivate.

Other princes again, of more gentle dispositions, contented themselves
with only obliging the vanquished nations to purchase their liberties, and
the enjoyment of their laws and privileges by annual tributes laid on them
for that purpose; and sometimes they would suffer kings to sit peaceably
on their thrones, upon condition of their paying them some kind of homage.

But such of these monarchs as were the wisest and ablest politicians,
thought it glorious to establish a kind of equality betwixt the nations
newly conquered and their other subjects; granting the former almost all
the rights and privileges which the others enjoyed: and by this means a
great number of nations, that were spread over different and far distant
countries, constituted, in