1XXXII ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE AND

peel to the Wealth of Nations*. The great objectof the former was to counteract the love of moneyand a tafte for luxury, by pofitive inftitutions;and to maintain in the great body of the people,habits of frugality, and a feverity ol manners. Thedecline of hates is uniformly afcribed by the phi-lofophers and hiftorians, both of Greece and Rome,to the influence of riches on national character;and the laws of Lycurgus , which, during a courfeof ages, banilhed the precious metals from Sparta ,are propofed by many of them as the molt perfectmodel of legiflation devifed by human wifdom.—How oppofite to this is the doctrine of modernpoliticians! Far from confideringpoverty as an ad-vantage to a ftate, their great aim is to open newfources of national opulence, and to animate theactivity of all claffes of the people by a tafte forthe comforts and accommodations of life.

One principal caufe of this difference betweenthe fpirit of ancient and of modern policy, maybe found in the difference between the fources ofnational wealth in ancient and in modern times.In ages when commerce and manufactures wereyet in their infancy, and among ftates conftitutedlike moft of the ancient republics, a fudden influxof riches from abroad was juftly dreaded as anevil, alarming to the morals, to the induftry, and

* Science de la Legislation, par le Cliev. Filangiert,Liv. i. chap. 13.