«But what all the violence of the
feudal institutions could never have effected, the silent and insensible
operation of foreign commerce and manufactures gradually brought about. These
gradually furnished the great proprietors with something for which they could
exchange the whole surplus produce of their lands, and which they could consume
themselves without sharing it either with tenants or retainers. All for
ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to
have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind. As soon, therefore, as they
could find a method of consuming the whole value of their rents themselves,
they had no disposition to share them with any other persons. For a pair of
diamond buckles, perhaps, or for something as frivolous and useless, they
exchanged the maintenance, or what is the same thing, the price of the
maintenance of a thousand men for a year, and with it the whole weight and
authority which it could give them. The buckles, however, were to be all their
own, and no other human creature was to have any share of them; whereas in the
more ancient method of expense they must have shared with at least a thousand
people. With the judges that were to determine the preference this difference
was perfectly decisive; and thus, for the gratification of the most childish,
the meanest, and the most sordid of all vanities, they gradually bartered their
whole power and authority.»
