Before entering upon this Inquiry, it may be well, for the sake of being explicitly understood, to define what I mean by wealthy and powerful nations.

In speaking of nations, wealth and power are sometimes related to each other, as cause and effect.  Sometimes there is between a mutual action and re-action.  In the natural or ordinary course of things, they are, at first, intimately connected and dependent on each other, till, at last, this connection lessening by degrees, and they even act in opposite directions; when wealth undermines and destroys power, but power never destroys wealth. {10}

Though wealth and power are often found united, they are sometimes found separated.  Wealth is altogether a real possession; power is comparative.  Thus, a nation may be wealthy in itself, though unconnected with any other nation; but its power can only be estimated by a comparison with that of other nations.

Wealth consists in having abundance of whatever mankind want or desire; and if there were but one nation on earth, it might be wealthy; but it would, in that case, be impossible to measure its power.

Wealth is, however, not altogether real; it is in a certain degree comparative, whereas power is altogether comparative.

The Romans, for example, may very justly be called the most

—–­ {10} Till a nation has risen above its neighbours, and those to whom it compares itself, wealth and power act in the same direction; but, after it has got beyond that point, they begin to counteract each other. -=-

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powerful nation that ever existed, yet a single battalion of our present troops, well supported with artillery, would have probably destroyed the finest army they ever sent into the field.  A single ship of the line would certainly have sunk, taken, or put to flight, all the fleets that Rome and Carthage ever sent to sea.  The feeblest and least powerful of civilized nations, with the present means of fighting, and the knowledge of the present day, would defeat an ancient army of the most powerful description.  Power then is entirely relative; and what is feebleness now, would, at a certain time, have been force or power.

It is not altogether so with wealth, which consists in the abundance of what men desire.  The Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, had wealth; and this, though, perhaps, not consisting in the same objects, was, perhaps, not inferior to ours at the present time; but as wealth, purely and simply, no comparison between different nations was necessary, farther than that men’s desires are augmented, by seeing the abundance possessed by others; and therefore they become comparative, as to wealth.  Without, however, entering into a long examination respecting the various possible combinations of wealth and power, which are something similarly connected in states, as health and strength are in the animal body, {11} let both be considered