The most favourable laws can do very little towards the happiness of people when the disposition of the ruling power is adverse to them.

"War," says Machiavelli, "ought to be the only study of a prince;" and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.

They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.

It is hard to say whether doctors of law or divinity have made the greater advances in the lucrative business of mystery.

True religion is the foundation of society. When that is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric cannot be stable nor lasting.

All writers on the science of policy are agreed, and they agree with experience, that all governments must frequently infringe the rules of justice to support themselves; that truth must give way to dissimulation, honesty to convenience, and humanity itself to the reigning of interest. The whole of this mystery of iniquity is called the reason of state.