suppressed under a sense of dependence. The individual considers his
community so far only as it can be rendered subservient to his personal
advancement or profit: he states himself in competition with his fellow
creatures; and, urged by the passions of emulation, of fear and jealousy,
of envy and malice, he follows the maxims of an animal destined to preserve
his separate existence, and to indulge his caprice or his appetite, at the
expense of his species.

On this corrupt foundation, men become either rapacious, deceitful, and
violent, ready to trespass on the rights of others; or servile, mercenary,
and base, prepared to relinquish their own. Talents, capacity, and force of
mind, possessed by a person of the first description, serve to plunge him
the deeper in misery, and to sharpen the agony of cruel passions; which
lead him to wreak on his fellow creatures the torments that prey on
himself. To a person of the second, imagination, and reason itself, only
serve to point out false objects of fear and desire, and to multiply the
subjects of disappointment and of momentary joy. In either case, and
whether we suppose that corrupt men are urged by covetousness, or betrayed
by fear, and without specifying the crimes which from either disposition
they are prepared to commit, we may safely affirm, with Socrates, "That
every master should pray he may not meet with such a slave; and every such
person, being unfit for liberty, should implore that he may meet with a
merciful master."

Man, under this measure of corruption, although he may be bought for a
slave by those who know how to turn his faculties and his labour to profit;
and although, when kept under proper restraints, his neighbourhood may be
convenient or useful; yet is certainly unfit to act on the footing of a
liberal combination or concert with his fellow creatures: his mind is not
addicted to friendship or confidence; he is not willing to act for the