of power, is fraught with evil. It as often makes men as nations, vain, presumptuous, and arrogant. Wealth is then no longer an instrument for its increase by the development of new sources of trade and commerce, or of the natural resources of a nation, but is made subservient to individual vanity in the erection of magnificent houses, in luxurious entertainments, or in other modes of extravagance prejudicial to the interests of the state.
Purse-proud men consider wealth essential to their greatness, and its lavish expenditure necessary to the maintenance of their position. They vie with each other in their houses, equipages, dress, dinners, and fêtes of every kind. As it is with individuals so it is with nations; and such was essentially the case with the Italian republics in their career after the fifteenth century. Each of the great cities then claimed for herself the honour of being the foremost in wealth, in power, and in splendour. Independent of each other, they became rivals, not merely for ascendancy, but in empty show. Trifling matters of etiquette were too frequently magnified into national insults. The most frivolous individual complaints were dealt with as matters requiring the serious consideration of the respective states. These petty animosities, the offsprings of overgrown wealth, and of its too frequent accompaniments, arrogance and vanity, imperceptibly increased in time into national jealousies and into a political rivalry, of a character dangerous to the well-being of all the republics. Their differences, craftily fermented by their more military neighbours, made them at last an easy prey to the despotism of an overwhelming German potentate,
