Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/132

122 ments was dissimilar, therefore this structure could not liave bcea the cause. But a similarity existed between England and Italy, in two material circumstances during these centuries; ignorance and nobility. England and Italy were both ill a state of turbulence and misery during the contemplated period, The balances of England, would therefore have been an ineffectual experiment to cure the calamities of Italy; and the mixed republicanism of Italy, as ineffectual to cure the calamities of England. The evil moral causes, ignorance and nobility, being common to both countries, would still have produced evil effects, had they been transposed.

From the termination of the fifteenth century, the two chief calamities which had previously afflicted Europe, diminished in malignancy. Printing gradually mitigated the effects of ignorance; and commerce and alienation, gradually destroyed the balance of property and power among orders. To defend noble or privileged orders by a comparison between Italy, before the discovery of printing and under a feudal monopoly of land, and England, enlightened by that art, and relieved from this monopoly, is reasoning thus: As England, after the power and influence of her nobility were destroyed by alienation and the diffusion of knowledge, became happier than Italy, whilst afflicted with powerful noble orders, therefore noble orders are blessings.

The amelioration of the human condition, though general to Europe, was not precisely the same in each country. It seems in a great measure to have been graduated by the thermometer of nobility, and to have proceeded with celerity or tardiness, in proportion to the imbecility or strength of noble orders.

In Russia and Poland, the nobility long retained property and power, and the people, oppression and misery. In France and Germany, the nobility retained more of its property and power, than in England, and the people were more oppressed. In England, nobility received the first and hardest blow, and she suddenly overtook and surpassed