Page:A Vindication of Natural Society - Burke (1756).djvu/23

 he means every sort of State however constituted. He ought, says this great political Doctor, only consider Peace as a breathing Time, which gives him Leisure to contrive, and furnishes Ability to execute military Plans. A Meditation on the Conduct of political Societies made old Hobbes imagine, that War was the State of Nature; and truly, if a Man judged of the Individuals of our Race by their Conduct when united and packed into Nations and Kingdoms, he might imagine that every sort of Virtue was unnatural and foreign to the Mind of Man.

The first Accounts we have of Mankind are but Accounts of their Butcheries of each other. All Empires have been cemented in Blood; and in those early Periods when the Race of Mankind began first to form themselves into Parties and Combinations, the first Effect of the Combination, and indeed the End for which it seems purposely formed, and best calcu-