It is no less worth observing, that this artificial division of mankind into separate societies is a perpetual source in itself of hatred and dissension among them.  The names which distinguish them are enough to blow up hatred and rage.  Examine history; consult present experience; and you will find that far the greater part of the quarrels between several nations had scarce any other occasion than that these nations were different combinations of people, and called by different names:  to an Englishman, the name of a Frenchman, a Spaniard, an Italian, much more a Turk, or a Tartar, raises of course ideas of hatred and contempt.  If you would inspire this compatriot of ours with pity or regard for one of these, would you not hide that distinction?  You would not pray him to compassionate the poor Frenchman, or the unhappy German.  Far from it; you would speak of him as a foreigner; an accident to which all are liable.  You would represent him as a man; one partaking with us of the same common nature, and subject to the same law.  There is something so averse from our nature in these artificial political distinctions, that we need no other trumpet to kindle us to war and destruction.  But there is something so benign and healing in the general voice of humanity that, maugre all our regulations to prevent it, the simple name of man applied properly, never fails to work a salutary effect.

This natural unpremeditated effect of policy on the unpossessed passions of mankind appears on other occasions.  The very name of a politician, a statesman, is sure to cause terror and hatred; it has always connected with it the ideas of treachery, cruelty, fraud, and tyranny; and those writers who have faithfully unveiled the mysteries of state-freemasonry, have ever been held in general detestation, for even knowing so perfectly a theory so detestable.  The case of Machiavel seems at first sight something hard in that respect.  He is obliged to bear the iniquities of those whose maxims and rules of government he published.  His speculation is more abhorred than their practice.

But if there were no other arguments against artificial society than this I am going to mention, methinks it ought to fall by this one only.  All writers on the science of policy are agreed, and they agree with experience, that, all governments must frequently infringe the rules of justice to support themselves; that truth must give way to dissimulation; honesty to convenience; and humanity itself to the reigning interest.  The whole of this mystery of iniquity is called the reason of state.  It is a reason which I own I cannot penetrate.  What sort of a protection is this of the general right, that is maintained by infringing the rights of particulars?  What sort of justice is this, which is enforced by breaches of its own laws?  These paradoxes I leave to be solved by the able heads of legislators and politicians.  For my part, I say what a plain man would say on such an occasion.  I can never believe that any institution, agreeable to nature, and proper for mankind, could find it necessary, or even expedient, in any case whatsoever, to do what the best and worthiest instincts of mankind warn us to avoid.  But no wonder, that what is set up in opposition to the state of nature should preserve itself by trampling upon the law of nature.