vanity, that sense of honour which gave rules to the personal courage; and
into a servile baseness that loyalty, which bound each in his place to his
immediate superior, and the whole to the throne.

Nations are most exposed to corruption from this quarter, when the
mechanical arts, being greatly advanced, furnish numberless articles to be
applied in ornament to the person, in furniture, entertainment, or
equipage; when such articles as the rich alone can procure are admired; and
when consideration, precedence, and rank, are accordingly made to depend on
fortune.

In a more rude state of the arts, although wealth be unequally divided, the
opulent can amass only the simple means of subsistence: they can only fill
the granary, and furnish the stall; reap from more extended fields, and
drive their herds over a larger pasture. To enjoy their magnificence, they
must live in a crowd; and to secure their possessions, they must be
surrounded with friends that espouse their quarrels. Their honours, as well
as their safety, consist in the numbers who attend them; and their personal
distinctions are taken from their liberality, and supposed elevation of
mind. In this manner, the possession of riches serves only to make the
owner assume a character of magnanimity, to become the guardian of numbers,
or the public object of respect and affection. But when the bulky
constituents of wealth, and of rustic magnificence, can be exchanged for
refinements; and when the produce of the soil may be turned into equipage,
and mere decoration; when the combination of many is no longer required for
personal safety; the master may become the sole consumer of his own estate:
he may refer the use of every subject to himself; he may employ the
materials of generosity to feed a personal vanity, or to indulge a sickly
and effeminate fancy, which has learned to enumerate the trappings of
weakness or folly among the necessaries of life.