SCENE II. The Mall.
Enter MANLY.
It must be so, Montague! and it is not all the tribe
of Mandevilles that shall convince me that a nation,
to become great, must first become dissipated. Lux-
ury is surely the bane of a nation: Luxury! which
enervates both soul and body, by opening a thousand
new sources of enjoyment, opens, also, a thousand new
sources of contention and want: Luxury! which ren-
ders a people weak at home, and accessible to bribery,
corruption, and force from abroad. When the Grecian
states knew no other tools than the axe and the saw,
the Grecians were a great, a free, and a happy people.
The kings of Greece devoted their lives to the service
of their country, and her senators knew no other
superiority over their fellow-citizens than a glorious
pre-eminence in danger and virtue. They exhibited
to the world a noble spectacle,--a number of inde-
pendent states united by a similarity of language,
sentiment, manners, common interest, and common
consent, in one grand mutual league of protection.
And, thus united, long might they have continued the
cherishers of arts and sciences, the protectors of the
oppressed, the scourge of tyrants, and the safe asylum
of liberty. But when foreign gold, and still more per-
nicious foreign luxury, had crept among them, they
sapped the vitals of their virtue.
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