Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/59

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¬" Unhappily for Armata, the lust of dominion, or rather of revenue, beyond the usefulness or even the capacity of enjoyment, ensnared her into a contest with a great and growing" people, to obtain by force what duty and affection had spontaneously held out to her. ¬" I pointed out metaphorically to your view two vast continents under her imperial wings : one of them, to which, looking southward, her right extended, she had planted and peopled. The inhabitants of Hesperia were her own chil- dren, worshipping with the same rites the God of their common fathers, speaking the same language, following in the track of the same laws and customs which fashion and characterise a people. — Armata, in short, ruled by the freest consent the whole of this vast country, appoint- ed without question all her magistrates, and enjoyed a monopoly of her commerce, not only in the exclusive import of her various produc- tions into her own bosom, but in the mono- polous return of all her own manufactures: ¬e which, ¬