prince who had contributed so much to their wealth, to his booty, and to their self-love by his victory.  The village community received back the robber and his gang with the same feelings:  by their skill and daring they had come back loaded with wealth, which they were always disposed to spend liberally with their neighbours.  There was no more of truth in the prince and his army in their relations with the princes and people of neighbouring principalities, than in the robber and his gang in their relations with the people robbed.  The prince flatters the self-love of his army and his people; the robber flatters that of his gang and his village—­the question is only in degree; the persons whose self-love is flattered are blind to the injustice and cruelty of the attack—­the prince is the idol of a people, the robber the idol of a gang.  Was ever robber more atrocious in his attacks upon a merchant or a village than Louis XIV of France in his attacks upon the Palatine and Palatinate of the Rhine?  How many thousand similar instances might be quoted of princes idolized by their people for deeds equally atrocious in their relations with other people?  What nation or sovereign ever found fault with their ambassadors for telling lies to the kings, courts, and people of other countries?[16]

Rome, during the whole period of her history, was a mere den of execrable thieves, whose feelings were systematically brutalized by the most revolting spectacles, that they might have none of those sympathies with suffering humanity, none of those ’compunctious visitings of conscience’, which might be found prejudicial to the interests of the gang, and beneficial to the rest of mankind.  Take, for example, the conduct of this atrocious gang under Aemilius Paulus, against Epirus and Greece generally after the defeat of Perseus, all under the deliberate decrees of the senate:  take that of this gang under his son Scipio the younger, against Carthage and Numantia; under Cato, at Cyprus—­all in the same manner under the deliberate decrees of the senate.  Take indeed the whole of her history as a republic, and we find it that of the most atrocious band of robbers that was ever associated against the rest of their species.  In her relations with the rest of mankind Rome was collectively devoid of truth; and her citizens, who were sent to govern conquered countries, were no less devoid of truth individually—­they cared nothing whatever for the feelings or the opinions of the people governed; in their dealings with them, truth and honour were entirely disregarded.  The only people whose favourable opinion they had any desire to cultivate were the members of the great gang; and the most effectual mode of conciliating them was to plunder the people of conquered countries, and distribute the fruits among them in presents of one kind or another.  Can any man read without shuddering that it was the practice among this atrocious gang to have all the multitude of unhappy prisoners of both