Page:The Lusiad; Or, The Discovery of India.djvu/34

 armed Government with the happiest power that can be exerted by the rulers of a nation; the power to prevent every extremity which may possibly arise from bad harvests; extremities, which, in former ages, were esteemed more dreadful visitations of the wrath of heaven, than the pestilence itself. Yet modern London is not so certainly defended against the latter, its ancient visitor in almost every reign, than the Commonwealth by the means of Commerce, under a just and humane government, is secured against the ravages of the former. If, from these great outlines of the happiness enjoyed by a commercial over an uncommercial nation, we turn our eyes to the manners, the advantages will be found no less in favour of the civilized.

Whoever is inclined to declaim at the vices of the present age, let him read, and be convinced, that the Gothic ages were less virtuous. If the spirit of chivalry prevented effeminacy, it was the foster-father of a ferocity of manners, now happily unknown. Rapacity, avarice, and effeminacy are the vices ascribed to the increase of Commerce; and in some degree, it must be confessed, they follow her steps. Yet infinitely more dreadful, as every palatinate in Europe often felt, were the effects of the two first under the feodalfeudal [sic] Lords, than possibly can be experienced under any system of trade. The virtues and vices of human nature are the same in every age: they only receive different modifications, and are dormant or awakened into action under different circumstances. The feodal Lord had it infinitely more in his power to be rapacious than the merchant. And whatever avarice may attend the trader, his intercourse with the rest of mankind lifts him greatly above that brutish ferocity which actuates the savage, often the rustic, and in general characterizes the ignorant part of mankind. The abolition of the feodal system, a system of absolute slavery, and that equality of mankind, which affords the protection of property, and every other incitement to industry, are the glorious gifts which the spirit of Commerce, awakened by prince Henry of Portugal, has bestowed upon Europe in general; and, as if directed by the manes of his mother, a daughter of England, upon the British empire in particular. In the vice of