ernment, but for the benefit of the people; in other words, the industrious classes were robbed in order that industry might thrive.
Such are some of the benefits which European trade owes to the paternal care of European legislators. But worse still remains behind. For the economical evils, great as they were, have been far surpassed by the moral evils which this system produced. The first inevitable consequence was that, in every part of Europe, there arose numerous and powerful gangs of armed smugglers, who lived by disobeying the laws which their ignorant rulers had imposed. These men, desperate from the fear of punishment, and accustomed to the commission of every crime, contaminated the surrounding population; introduced into peaceful villages vices formerly unknown; caused the ruin of entire families; spread, wherever they came, drunkenness, theft, and dissoluteness; and familiarized their associates with those coarse and swinish debaucheries which were the natural habits of so vagrant and lawless a life. The innumerable crimes arising from this are directly chargeable upon the European governments by whom they were provoked. The offences were caused by the laws; and now that the laws are repealed, the offences have disappeared. But it will hardly be pretended that the interests of civilization have been advanced by such a policy as this. It will hardly be pretended that we owe much to a system which, having called into existence a new class of criminals, at length retraces its steps; and, though it thus puts an end to the crime, only destroys what its own act had created.
It is unnecessary to say that these remarks do not affect the real services rendered to society by every tolerably organized government. In all countries, a power of punishing crime and of framing laws must reside somewhere; otherwise the nation is in a state of anarchy. But the accusation which the historian is bound to bring against every government which has hitherto existed is that it has overstepped its proper functions, and at each step has done incalculable harm. The love of exercising power has been found to be so universal that no class of men who have possessed author-
