Europe, and than would have been adopted, or patiently borne, in ages
of virtuous simplicity. A very numerous part of our countrymen spend
their most susceptible age in those countries, where despotic manners
remarkably prevail. They are themselves, when invested with office,
treated by the natives with an idolatrous degree of reverence, which
teaches them to expect a similar submission to their will, on their
return to their own country. They have been accustomed to look up to
personages greatly their superiors in rank and riches, with awe; and
to look down on their inferiors in _property_ with supreme contempt,
as slaves of their will and ministers of their luxury. Equal laws and
equal liberty at home appear to them saucy claims of the poor and the
vulgar, which tend to divest riches of one of the greatest charms,
over-bearing dominion. We do, indeed, import gorgeous silks and
luscious sweets from the Indies, but we import, at the same time, the
spirit of despotism, which adds deformity to the purple robe, and
bitterness to the honied beverage." "That _Oriental_ manners are
unfavourable to liberty, is, I believe, universally conceded. The
natives of the East Indies entertain not the idea of independence.
They treat the Europeans, who go among them to acquire their riches,
with a respect similar to the abject submission which they pay to
their native despots. Young men, who in England scarcely possessed
the rank of the gentry, are waited upon in India, with more attentive
servility than is paid or required in many courts of Europe. Kings of
England seldom assume the state enjoyed by an East India governor, or
even by subordinate officers. Enriched at an early age, the adventurer
returns to England. His property admits him to the higher circles
of fashionable life. He aims at rivalling or excelling all the
old nobility in the splendour of his mansions, the finery of his
carriages, the number of his liveried train, the profusion of his
tables, in every unmanly indulgence which an empty vanity can covet,