the pre-eminent riches of fome countries, their naval power, their foreign poffeffions, and their new influence (difproportioned to the extent of their European territory), had adapted itself exceedingly well to the former focial relations of Europe; and if extraordinary and unexpected convulfions had not, from the year 1789, fhaken the whole edifice to its foundations, and loosened every part of it, the question, Does there still exift a law of nations? would probably, at this time, have been abfurd, notwithftanding all the changes occafioned or haftened by that system. This will, I hope, appear more plainly from the observations that will follow in the next Part of the work, in which the fituation of Europe, at the commencement of the French revolution, will be more particularly difcuffed.

3dly. The influence of the commercial and colonial fyftem was not confined to any particular countries; all of them were more or less engaged in it.

The European establishments in all quarters of the world, which neceffarily promoted the extenfion of commerce and industry, were very far from being a monopoly in the hands of the nations immediately interested in them. They were a general advantage, of which, by degrees,

2.

every

every country in Europe received its fhare. Those which, by their situation and habits, were devoted to navigation, were the first to enjoy thefe advantages; but however defirous they might have been of preferving them exclufively, the natural course of things prefented infurmountable obftacles to the accomplishment of fuch wishes. The vent of their produce awakened on every fide, and in the most inland parts of the continent, the fame activity, the fame defires, and the fame arts as those which ftimulated, inspired, and affifted the maritime states in their undertakings. These nations were even sometimes, as in the examples of Spain and Portugal, only the channel, between whose uncultivated and unfruitful banks the enlivening ftream of industry and riches flowed to happier regions. The condition of society was in every respect advanced and refined. With the wealth and improvement of individuals, the fum of those means and resources which conftitute the strength of nations, was increased. All countries were benefited; but all nearly in the fame proportion. The whole became more rich, more powerful, and more civilized; but the proportions between the component parts remained the fame.

I do

I do not mean to affert, that this participation of advantages arifing from the fyftem of commerce and colonization, amounted to an abfolute equality among all the parties concerned. The progrefs muft naturally have been greater and more rapid in those countries where the new feeds of industry, commerce, and riches found a foil prepared to receive them; or, where a favourable fituation, the difpofitions and capacities of the inhabitants, or the peculiarities of their civil and political conftitution, promoted their growth in a more remarkable degree. The confequences of the general change were certainly more perceptible in France than in Germany, in England and Holland, than in Ruffia or Poland; and the effects produced on the proportions of their national strength, must have operated more rapidly and immediately in the former than the latter. That these inequalities should disturb the general balance, is an effect which the system of commerce only has in common with every other cause of social improvement. No federal conflitution on earth can preserve the states which compofe it during centuries exactly in their original relative fituations. No federal conftitution can enfure an unaltered continuance of the precife mafs of respective firength, which was the groundwork of its formation, or even the preservation of the fame proportions in the exten

3

fion of that mafs.

Even if the fyftem of com

merce had never exifted, the varieties of national character and industry, the different conflitutions of the ftates of Europe, and many accidental circumstances, would have created a diversity in their several attainments; and accordingly the machine of government, which always follows the progrefs of individuals, would have been more or less complete in each. Foreign trade was only one of the many and variousfprings which set this great machine in motion. If commerce, with all its attendant benefits, had remained the exclufive property of a few states; and had these favoured nations alone attained to a higher degree of civilization and wealth, and acquired defpotic influence in the fate of Europe, while other countries continued in barbarism, poverty, and relative weakness; it would then, perhaps, have been allowable to fay, that the colonial fyftem had fubverted the federal conftitution of Europe. But fince the cafe is otherwife; fince, in the extenfive fcene of activity, industry, and opulence, which the progrefs of commerce has difplayed, no ftate whatever has remained an idle fpectator; fince all have taken a lively part in it, and all have been in a great, though, perhaps, not altogether equal measure, gainers by it; it is not poffible that this system fhould

E

fhould have been a cause of the general decay, or total diffolution of the federative conftitution.

4thly. Even the fuperior advantage accruing from the immediate poffeffion of commerce and colonies, was divided among several nations, and therefore established in the general balance of Europe, a new and diftinct balance of the maritime and commercial states.

Nations enabled to found colonies, and monopolize their commerce; to carry on an extenfive navigation, and to fupply the neighbouring states with the productions of the remoteft parts of the earth, must have derived a more direct, and of courfe a greater benefit from the fyftem of commerce and colonization, under circumstances otherwise equal, than those excluded by the nature of their fituation from fuch undertakings. The fate of Spain and Portugal fufficiently evinces that this rule is not without exceptions; for they poffeffed the Finest colonies in the world, and yet fell into a Itate of poverty and decay unknown to any other continental power; which shows, that the advantages of commerce and colonization are only conditional, depending on the industry, morals, legiflation, and polity of the mother

country.