Such is the culture; the fruit that it produces may easily be conjectured.
The fashion which is given to the mind in youth, it ordinarily retains in age; and it is with ordinary cases only that the present argument is concerned. If there have been kings, as there have been other men, in the forming of whom particular have outweighed general causes, the recollection of such exceptions has little to do with the question, whether monarchy be, generally speaking, a benefit or an evil. Nature has no particular mould in which she forms the intellects of princes; monarchy is certainly not jure divino; and of consequence, whatever system we may adopt upon the subject of natural talents, the ordinary rate of kings, will possess, at best, but the ordinary rate of human understanding. In what has been said, and in what remains to say, we are not to fix our minds upon prodigies, but to think of the species as it is usually found.
But, though education for the most part determines the character of the future man, it may not be useless to follow the disquisition a little further. Education, in one sense, is the affair of youth; but, in a stricter and more accurate sense, the education of an intellectual being can terminate only with his life. Every incident that befalls us, is the parent of a sentiment, and either confirms or counteracts the preconceptions of the mind.
Now the causes that acted upon kings in their minority, continue to act upon them in their maturer years. Every thing is carefully kept out of sight, that may remind them they are men. Every means is employed which may persuade them, that they are of a different species of beings, and subject to different laws of existence. "A king," such at least is the maxim of absolute monarchies, "though obliged by a rigid system of duties, is accountable for his discharge of those duties only to God." That is, exposed to a hundredfold more seductions than ordinary men, he has not, like them, the checks of a visible constitution of things, perpetually, through the medium of the senses, making their way to the mind. He is taught to believe himself superior to the restraints that bind ordinary men, and subject to a rule peculiarly his own. Everything is trusted to the motives of an invisible world; which, whatever may be the estimate to which they are entitled in the view of philosophy, mankind are not now to learn, are weakly felt by those who are immersed in splendour or affairs, and have little chance of success, in contending with the impressions of sense, and the allurements of visible objects.
It is a maxim generally received in the world, "that every king is a despot in his heart," and the maxim can seldom fail to be verified in the experiment. A limited monarch, and an absolute monarch, though in many respects different, approach in more points than they separate. A monarch strictly without limitation is perhaps a phenomenon that never yet existed.
All countries have possessed some check upon despotism, which, to their deluded imaginations, appeared a sufficient security for their independence.
All kings have possessed such a portion of luxury and ease, have been so far surrounded with servility and falsehood, and to such a degree exempt from personal responsibility, as to destroy. the natural and wholesome complexion of the human mind. Being placed so high, they find but one step between them and the summit of social authority, and they cannot but eagerly desire to pass that step. Having so frequent occasions of seeing their commands implicitly obeyed, being trained in so long a scene of adulation and servility, it is impossible they should not feel some indignation, at the honest firmness that sets limits to their omnipotence. But to say, "that every king is a despot in his heart," will presently be shown to be the same thing, as to say, that every king is, by unavoidable necessity, the enemy of the human race.
The principal source of virtuous conduct, is to recollect the absent.
He that takes into his estimate present things alone, will be the perpetual slave of sensuality and selfishness. He will have no principle by which to restrain appetite, or to employ himself in just and benevolent pursuits.
The cause of virtue and innocence, however urgent, will no sooner cease to be heard than it will be forgotten. Accordingly, nothing is found more favourable to the attainment of moral excellence than meditation: nothing more hostile than an uninterrupted succession of amusements. It would be absurd to expect from kings the recollection of virtue in exile or disgrace.
It has generally been observed that, even for the loss of a flatterer or a favourite, they speedily console themselves. Image after image so speedily succeed in their sensorium that no one leaves a durable impression. A circumstance which contributes to this moral insensibility is the effeminacy and cowardice which grow out of perpetual indulgence. Their minds irresistibly shrink from painful ideas, from motives that would awaken them to effort, and reflections that demand severity of disquisition.
What situation can be more unfortunate, than that of a stranger, who cannot speak our language, knows nothing of our manners and customs, and enters into the busy scene of our affairs, without one friend to advise with or assist him? If anything is to be got by such a man, we may depend upon seeing him instantly surrounded with a group of thieves, sharpers and extortioners. They will impose upon him the most incredible stories, will overreach him in every article of his necessities or his commerce, and he will leave the country at last, as unfriended, and in as absolute ignorance, as he entered it. Such a stranger is a king; but with this difference, that the foreigner, if he be a man of sagacity and penetration, may make his way through this crowd of intruders, and discover a set of persons worthy of his confidence, which can scarcely in any case happen to a king.