the first victims of that wretched insignificance, into which the members
of every corrupted state, by the tendency of their weaknesses and their
vices, are in haste to plunge themselves.

It is in this condition, that the sensual invent all those refinements on
pleasure, and devise those incentives to a satiated appetite, which tend
to foster the corruptions of a dissolute age. The effects of brutal
appetite, and the mere debauch, are more flagrant, and more violent,
perhaps, in rude ages, than they are in the later periods of commerce and
luxury: but that perpetual habit of searching for animal pleasure where it
is not to be found, in the gratifications of an appetite that is cloyed,
and among the ruins of an animal constitution, is not more fatal to the
virtues of the soul, than it is even to the enjoyment of sloth, or of
pleasure; it is not a more certain avocation from public affairs, or a
surer prelude to national decay, than it is a disappointment to our hopes
of private felicity.

In these reflections, it has been the object not to ascertain a precise
measure to which corruption has risen in any of the nations that have
attained to eminence, or that have gone to decay; but to describe that
remissness of spirit, that weakness of soul, that state of national
debility, which is likely to end in political slavery; an evil which
remains to be considered as the last object of caution, and beyond which
there is no subject of disquisition, in the perishing fortunes of nations.




SECTION V.