Chapter I: I Seek in men that love of their country, which I find so much (1)

celebrated in books, but I do not meet with it; I mean that just, noble and virtuous love, which they owe to their country. In some, I see no kind of affection for their country at all; in others, I perceive only a criminal affection, which is vulgarly called national prejudice.

II. I do not deny, that by turning over history, you will find thousands of victims sacrificed to this idol. What war is undertaken without this specious pretence? What field do we see drenched with human blood, that posterity, over the carcases from whence it flowed, has not fixed the honourable inscription, that those men lost their lives for the good of their country? But if we examine things critically, we shall find the world is much mistaken, in thinking there have been so many, or so refined sacrifices made to this imaginary deity. Let us figure to ourselves a republic, armed for a war, undertaken on the principle of a just defence; and let us also proceed to examine by the light of reason, the impulse which animates men’s hearts to expose their lives in the quarrel. Among the private men, some inlist for the pay and the plunder, others with the hopes of bettering their fortunes, and acquiring military honour and preferment; but the greatest part, from motives of obedience, and fear of the Prince or the General. He who commands the army, is instigated by his interest and his glory. The Prince, or Chief Magistrate, who is at a distance from the danger, acts more for the sake of maintaining his dominion, than for supporting the republic. Now admitting that all these people should find it more for their interest to retire to their houses, than to defend the walls, you would hardly see ten men left on the ramparts.

III. Even those feats of prowess of the antients, which are so blazoned and immortalized by fame, as the ultimate exertions of zeal for the public good, were more probably generated by ambition, and the love of glory, than by the love of their country; and I am inclined to think, that if there had not been witnesses present, to have handed down to posterity an account of their exploits, that from a principle of love to his country, neither Curtius would have precipitated himself into the pit, nor Marcus Attilius Regulus have submitted to die a lingering death in an iron cage; nor would the twin brothers, for the sake of extending the boundaries of Carthage, have consented to be buried alive. The incitement of posthumous fame had great influence among the Gentiles; and it might also happen, that some rushed on a violent death, not so much with a view of acquiring posthumous fame, as from the mad vanity of seeing themselves admired and applauded for a few instants of their lives, of which Lucian gives us a striking example, in the death that was submitted to by the philosopher Peregrinus.

IV. Among the Romans, the love of their country, was so much in vogue and so prevalent, that it seemed as if this noble inclination was the soul of their whole republic. But what appears to me is, that the Romans themselves, on account of Cato’s constant and steady attachment to the public, looked upon him as a very uncommon man, and as one descended from Heaven. It may be said of all the rest of them, almost without exception, that in serving their country, they sought more their own exaltation than the public utility. They gave Cicero the glorious surname of father of his country, for the successful and vigorous opposition he made to Catiline’s conspiracy. This in appearance was a great merit, although in reality it was but an equivocal one; for not only the success of Cicero’s attaining the consulate, depended upon that fury’s not carrying his point, but his life also; for it is true, that when afterwards Cæsar tyrannized over the republic, Cicero accommodated himself very well with him. The subornations of Jugurtha, King of Numidia, shewed abundantly, what sort of spirit influenced the Roman senate; which, contrary to the interest of the republic, tolerated in that penetrating and violent Prince, many grave and pernicious evils, because every new insolence he committed, was accompanied with a new present to the senators. He was at last brought to Rome, and detained there; and although he was so far from correcting or reforming his old practices, that within the city itself, he committed new and enormous offences; by the favour of gold, he was permitted to go at large, which in the delinquent himself begot such a contempt of that government, that when he left Rome, after getting at a little distance from the city, he turned about, and looking at it with disdain, called it _a venal city_, adding, that it would soon perish, if any one could find money enough to pay the price of its ruin: _Urbem venalem, et mature perituram, si emptorem invenirit_ (Sallust in Jugurtha). The same thing, and even more pointedly, was said by Petronius:

_Venalis populus, venalis curia patrem._

This is a picture of the love of their country so celebrated among the Romans, and to which many at this day, judge they owed the enormous extension of the Roman empire.

SECT. II.

V. Our opinion of this matter differs greatly from that of the bulk of mankind, by whom it is generally believed, the love of their country is natural to, and transcendent in all men; and as a proof of it, they alledge the repugnance, which all, or nearly all men feel at abandoning the country in which they were born, to go and reside in any other whatever; but I find here a great equivocation, and that what men call the love of their country, is in reality, nothing else but the love of their own convenience. There is no man who does not leave his own country cheerfully, when he has expectations by going to another of mending his fortune; and examples of this sort are seen every day. Of all the fables that have been fabricated by the poets, there is no one appears to be more void of probability, than that of Ulysses’s having preferred the dreary and unpleasant rocks and craigs of his own country Ithaca, to the immortality full of delights, which was offered him by the nymph Calipso, upon condition that he would come and live with her in the island of Ogygia.

VI. I may be told, that the Scythians, as Ovid testifies, fled from the delicacies of Rome, to the asperities of their own frozen soil; that the Laplanders, maugre all the conveniences and accommodations that were offered them at Vienna, sighed to return to their own poor steril country; and that but a few years ago, a Canadian savage who was brought to Paris, where he was furnished with every possible convenience, lived there in a seeming state of affliction and melancholy.

VII. I say in answer to all this, that it is true; but it is also true, that these men live with more convenience to themselves in Scythia, in Lapland, and in Canada, than in Vienna, at Paris, or in Rome. Habituated to the food of their country, however hard and coarse it may appear to us, they find it both grateful and salutary. They are born among snow, and live pleasantly in the midst of it; and as we cannot bear the cold of northern regions, they cannot endure the heat of southern ones. Their mode of government, is suited to their tempers and dispositions, and although the form is but indifferent, they being reconciled to it by custom, believe that nature itself never dictated any other. Our policy seems as barbarous to them, as theirs does to us. Here, we think it impossible to live without a house or permanent abode; they look upon this as a voluntary imprisonment, and regard it as much more convenient, to be at liberty to change their habitation, when, and unto wherever it is most agreeable to them, fabricating it in the evening, for the use of the night and the next day, either in the valley, on the side of the mountain, or in the plain. The accommodation afforded by changing situations as the seasons of the year vary, is enjoyed among us, by none but the great and the opulent; among those barbarians, there is no one who does not enjoy it; and I must confess for myself, that I look upon a man’s having power, whenever he pleases, to remove from a disagreeable neighbourhood, and settle himself in one he likes better, as a very enviable happiness.

VIII. Olaus Rudbec, a noble Swede, who had travelled a great deal through the northern regions, in a book that he wrote, intitled _Lapland Illustrated_, says, that the inhabitants of it, are so convinced of the advantages of their situation, that they would not exchange their own, for all the countries in the world. In fact, they possess some benefits or conveniencies in it, which are not imaginary, but real. That country, produces some regaling fruits, although they are different from ours; and the abundance of game and fish in it, all of them remarkably fine flavoured, is immense. The winters, which with us are so disagreeably damp and rainy, are there clear and serene; from whence it follows, that the natives are active, healthy, and robust. Thunder storms are scarce ever known in that region, nor is there a venomous snake to be found in all the country. They live also exempt from those two great scourges of Heaven, war and pestilence, their climate defending them from both these visitations, it being as obnoxious to strangers and the plague, as it is healthy to the natives. The snow does not incommode them, for by their natural agility, added to art and contrivance they fly over the tops of the snowy heights like crows. The multitude of white bears with which the country abounds, serves them for amusement and diversion; for they are so dextrous in combating these fierce animals, that there is scarce a Laplander, who does not kill many of them in a year, although it is very rare, that a Laplander is ever killed by one of them.

IX. We may add, that the long nights in those subpolar regions, of which they give us so horrible a representation, are not so dismal as they are imagined to be. They hardly experience total darkness there above one whole month; the reason is, because the sun descends below his horizon only twenty-three degrees and a half; and according to the computation of astronomers, the twilight may be perceived at eighteen degrees of depression. Neither does the apparent absence of the sun continue for six months, as it is commonly thought, but for five only, for on account of the great refraction of the rays in that atmosphere, you see the sun, half a month before it mounts above the horizon, and for the same space of time after it descends below it. Some Dutchmen in a northern voyage they made in 1596, being in the latitude of 76, were vastly astonished at seeing the sun fifteen or sixteen days before they expected to see it. In our discourse on mathematical paradoxes, we explained this phænomenon, and shewed, that by attending to, and computing all things, those who inhabit near the Poles, enjoy the light of the sun for a greater portion of the year, than those who live in the temperate and torrid zones; therefore what is said of the equal repartition of light all over the world, although it is generally assented to, is not true.

X. We much admire, and live very happily on the aliments we commonly use; but there is no nation, to which the same thing does not happen. The people of the northern regions, find the flesh of bears, wolves, and foxes, very savoury and regaling. The Tartars are fond of horse-flesh; the Arabs of the flesh of camels; and the Africans and Chinese, of that of dogs; for they both eat and sell them in the markets as we do pig pork. In some regions of Africa, they eat monkies, crocodiles, and serpents; and Scaliger says, that in various parts of the east, bats are esteemed as regaling a dish, as chickens are with us.

XI. The same that happens in point of food, happens with respect to everything else, for whether it proceeds from the force of habit or the proportion of temperament or disposition of each nation respectively, or that things of the same species, have different qualities in different countries, which make them more or less commodious or agreeable; every one finds himself better satisfied with the things of his own country, than with those of a foreign one, and he is therefore attached to it, because he feels his own convenience better gratified there, and his partiality for it is not influenced by the supposed love of his country.

XII. The inhabitants of the Marian islands, which are so called from Dona Mariana of Austria, who sent missionaries among them for their conversion, made no use of, nor had any knowledge of fire. Who, however, would venture to assert, that this element was not indispensably necessary to human life, or that there was any nation whatever, which could subsist without it? But notwithstanding this, those islanders, without fire, lived contented and happy. They were not sensible of the want of it, because they did not know it. Roots, fruit, and crude fish, were all their aliment; and still they were more healthy and robust than we, for living to a hundred years of age, was very frequent and common among them.

XIII. The force of custom is amazingly powerful, for it is capable of not only making the greatest asperities sufferable, but by peoples being familiarized to them, it also causes their being satisfied under them. He who was not well apprized of this truth, would be led to think what passed between Esteban King of Poland, and the Peasants of Livonia, incredible. This glorious Prince having observed, that these poor people were cruelly and very ill-treated by the nobles of the province, convened them together, and after condoling with them on their misery, told them, he proposed to make their subjection less severe and easier to be tolerated, by restraining the exercise of power in the nobility, within more mild and moderate bounds; but wonderful to relate, instead of seeming sensible of his benevolence, and embracing the offer he made them, they threw themselves at his feet, and begged he would not alter their customs, with which, through long usage, they were quite satisfied. What will not the force of habit conquer, if it is capable of making tyranny agreeable! Join to this, the circumstance of the Muscovite women, who are not happy or contented, unless their husbands, without their giving them any occasion for it, beat or cudgel them every day, regarding this unprovoked ill-treatment, as a token of their great love for them.

XIV. We may add to the foregoing remarks, that an uniformity of language, religion, and customs, makes the intercourse with our countrymen grateful and pleasing, as a diversity in those matters, makes the society of strangers aukward and unentertaining. Our particular connections and personal friendships also, tend to produce the same effect; and generally speaking, the love of convenience, and of that private ease and happiness, which every man finds in his own country, is what attracts him to, and retains him in it, and not the love of the country itself. He who should experience better personal accommodation in another region, would do as St. Peter did, who, as soon as he found himself happily situated on Mount Tabor, resolved to fix his lasting abode on that eminence, and to abandon for good and all the valley in which he was born.

SECT. III.

XV. It is also true, that not only real, but imaginary conveniences, have their influence, to promote an adherence to our country. Entertaining a flattering opinion of the country in which we were born, and preferring it to all others in the world, is one of the most common of all common errors. There is scarce any man, and among the lower class of people not a single one, who does not think his own country the first production of nature, and abounding in a three-fold proportion, with all the goods she distributes, either with respect to the genius or ability of the natives, the fertility of the soil, or the happiness of the climate. To understandings of inferior rank, near objects are represented as by the corporeal eye, which although they are really less, appear larger than things at a distance. In his nation only, are to be found learned and wise men, those of other kingdoms are hardly civilized; the customs of his country only are rational, and the language of it is the only soft and sufferable one; the hearing a stranger speak, as effectually excites them to laughter, as seeing Jack Pudding on a stage; his nation only abounds in riches, and the Prince of it is the only powerful one. At the end of the last century, when the arms of France were so prevalent, a junto of people at Salamanca being talking on this subject, a low Portugueze who was among them, with an air of great sagacity and importance, made the following political remark: _There is certainly now no Prince in Europe capable of resisting the King of France, except the King of Portugal._ But what Michael Montona, in his treatise intitled _Moral Reflections_, relates of a rustic Savoyard, is more extravagant still, who said, _I don’t believe the King of France has the ability he is said to have, for if that was the case, he would have negotiated with our Duke long ago, about making him his Major Domo._ Nearly after this manner, do all the low vulgar discourse of the things of their own country.

XVI. Neither are many of those exempted from so gross an error, although it is in a less degree, who by their birth or professions, are much superior to the lower class of people. The number of vulgar who do not associate with the common herd, but are intruded among people of understanding, is infinite. How many men of school learning, whose heads were stored with texts, have I seen filled with the caprice, that our nation is the only seat of knowledge and learning, and that in other countries, they print nothing but puerilities and bagatelles, more especially if they write in their own native idiom; nor does it appear to them, that any thing worth reading, can be published in French or Italian, which is in a manner maintaining, that the most important truths can’t be expressed or explained in other languages, although it is certain, the Apostles expounded the most essential and sublime ones in all tongues. But strangers are sufficiently revenged on us for this conceitedness, for in return for our considering them as people of little learning, they look upon us as illiberal and barbarous. Thus in all countries, you will find this piece of bad road to travel through, which is worn in holes and made rough, by the hacknied passage of carriages, loaded with the high notions and opinions the natives have of themselves, and the low ones they entertain of strangers.

SECT. IV.

XVII. The worst is, that those who do not think with the vulgar, talk like the vulgar. This proceeds, from what we call national passion or prejudice, the legitimate child of vanity, and emulation. Vanity teaches us, that we are interested in our nation being esteemed superior to all others, because every individual looks upon himself as a partaker in the pre-eminence; and emulation causes us to view strangers, especially those who are nearest us, with a jealous eye, and also inclines us to wish their abasement for our own security. From both these motives, people attribute to their own country, a thousand feigned excellencies, although at the time they mention them, they know they are fictitious.

XVIII. This abuse, has filled the world with lyes, and has corrupted the faith of almost all histories. When the glory of his own nation influences him, you will hardly find an historian competently sincere. Plutarch was one of the most impartial writers of antiquity; notwithstanding which, the love of his country, in matters that related to it, made him deviate not a little from his candour; for, as the illustrious Cano remarks, he aggrandizes the events and things appertaining to Greece, beyond their just proportion. And John Bodin observes, that upon examining his lives, you will find, although his comparisons between Greek heroes and Greek heroes, and between Roman and Roman ones, were rightly and fairly made; that when he came to draw the parallel between Greeks and Romans, he warped in favour of his own countrymen.

XIX. I have always admired Titus Livius, not only for his eminent discretion, method, and judgment, but also for his veracity. He does not conceal or dissemble the failings of the Romans, when in the course of his history they come in the way of his pen; but on the contrary he lays them open and exposes them; and what is more, at the hazard of offending Augustus, he highly extolled Pompey, and blazoned his character as preferrable to Cæsar’s, which in those times amounted to the same thing, as declaring himself a zealous republican. Notwithstanding this, I observe a fault in this prince of historians, which if it did not proceed from want of his adverting to, or being aware of it, we must confess to be the effect of his passion for the marvellous. In the two first ages of their republic, he gives an account of as many battles gained, and as many cities taken by the Romans, as would be sufficient to compleat the conquest of a vast empire; but at the end of this time, we see that republic confined within such narrow bounds, that few less states are at this day to be found in all Italy, which is a proof that the antecedent victories, were not so many nor so great in the original, as they are represented to be in the copy.

XX. There is scarce one of the modern historians I have read, in whom I have not observed the same inconsistency. If they relate the events of a long war, they paint them so favourably to their own side, that the reader from those premises, is induced to promise himself, that it will end in an advantageous peace, in which his nation will give the law to the enemy; but as the premises are false, the conclusion does not follow, and in the end, he finds things turn out quite contrary to what he expected.

XXI. I am not insensible, that during a war, such sort of lies may be politically necessary; therefore in all countries, they print Gazettes with privilege; I don’t say of lying, but of colouring events, so that they should not dishearten, but seem encouraging to the people; and in their description of things, they imitate the artifice of Apelles, who painted Antigonus in profile, to conceal his being blind of one eye; I mean, that they display the favourable side of events, and cover the adverse one by a deception. I say, that policy requires this should be done in Gazettes, to prevent the subjects being dismayed by the adverse strokes of fortune; but in books that are written many years after the transactions, what danger is there in speaking the truth?

XXII. The case is, that although none could happen to the public by it, the writer himself who should make the attempt, would be exposed to a great deal. The poor historians, scarce dare to do otherwise than disguise such truths, as are not advantageous to their countrymen. They must either flatter their own nation, or lay down the pen; for if they fail to do this, they will be branded with the epithet of being disaffected to their country. I lament most heartily the lot of father Mariana; this very learned Jesuit, over and above possessing the other talents necessary for an historian, was exceedingly sincere and ingenuous; but this illustrious quality, which aggrandized his glory with found critics, diminished it among the vulgar of Spain; they said he had not a Spanish heart, and that his affections and his pen were inimical to his country; and as heretofore, the extreme rigour of Septimus Severus to the Romans, was attributed to his being of African extraction by his father’s side, they imputed to father Mariana, a certain kind of pique against the Spaniards, and assigned as the cause of it, I don’t know whether with truth or not, his being of French descent on the side of his mother. They would have had him relate events, not as they happened, but in such a way as should seem most pleasing to them; and by such as are fond of adulation, the man who is not a flatterer is regarded as an enemy. But the same thing which made this great man ill looked upon in Spain, gained him the highest eulogiums from the most eminent personages in Europe: the following, bestowed on him by the great Cardinal Baronius, is sufficient to establish his honour and his fame: _Father John Mariana, a scrupulous lover of the truth, an excellent pattern and sectary of virtue, a worthy professor among the society of Jesus, and a Spaniard by birth, but void of all national passion or prejudice, in a learned and elegant stile, wrote a most perfect and faithful history of Spain._ (Baron. ad ann. Christi 688.)

XXIII. It is not only in Spain, that they would have their historians panegyrists, for the same thing happens in other countries. The King of England, sent for the famous Gregory Leti, to write the history of that kingdom; but he having protested he would not take pen in hand, unless he was allowed to speak the truth; the King, to encourage him to engage in the undertaking, assured him, that he should be permitted to comply with this indispensable obligation, upon which, he set to work, and compiled his history from the best authorities, and the most faithful monuments and records he could discover; but the natives having found reason to be dissatisfied with many of the facts laid open in it, the King repented of the permission he had given him, the copies were all called in by the procurement of administration, and the historian obliged to leave England, but ill recompensed for his trouble.

XXIV. We Spaniards, complain much of the French authors, alledging, that from their hatred to us, they disfigure transactions which are glorious to our nation, and aggrandize in proportion, such as are favourable to their own. This complaint is reciprocal, and I believe well founded on both sides. When there have been frequent wars between two nations, you will always observe, that from the jealousies and animosities these have produced, the wars are constantly kept up in the writings of the authors of both kingdoms; for united as in the arrow, the feather follows the impetus of the steel.

XXV. But as a tribute due to truth and justice, I can’t avoid taking notice in this place, of an unjust accusation, which has been fulminated by our countrymen against the authors of that nation. They say, that in relating the events of that kingdom in the reign of Francis the first, they are either silent, or deny the imprisonment of that King at the battle of Pavia. This complaint has not the least foundation, for I have read accounts of this advantage of our arms in various French authors, and even in one of them, I saw celebrated the piquant answer of a French lady to King Francis, on the event of his imprisonment. The King in a satyrical manner, that insinuated Time had robbed her of her charms, said to her, _Madam, how long is it since you came from the land of Beauty?_ To which the lady readily answered, _Ever since you came from the country of Pavia_.

XXVI. Where I find the most reason for the Spaniards to be angry with the French authors, is in their denying the coming of St. James to Spain, and in their refusing to acknowledge that his sacred body is deposited there; but these pretensions are more the offspring of criticism than national jealousy, and never were material objects of emulation between the two nations. It is on the subject of the justice of wars, and the advantages gained in the prosecution of them, that the pens engage with the most acrimony.

SECT. V.

XXVII. From this spirit of national prejudice, which prevails in almost all histories, it happens, that with respect to an infinite number of facts, the things which are past seem as uncertain to us, as those which are to come. I acknowledge, that the historical Pyrrhonism of Campanela was extravagant, who carried his want of confidence in history to such a point, as to say, he doubted whether there ever was an Emperor in the world named Charles the Great. But with respect to those events, which the historians of one nation affirm, and those of another deny; and as there are many such events, it will be prudent for us to suspend our judgment, till some well-informed third person shall decide upon them; for, excited either by vanity or inclination, or led by condescension, every one goes on to flatter his own nation; the light of truth at the same time, being concealed from the eyes of the people, by the smoke of the incense of flattery, and the harmony of adulation, preventing their listening to the voice of reason.

XXVIII. I shall not dwell upon those authors, who carried the passion for their country, to lengths of extravagance, such as Goropius Becanus, a native of Brabant, who very deliberately endeavoured to prove, that the Flemish tongue was the first in the world; and Olaus Rudbec, a Swede, who, in a book he wrote on purpose, tried to evince, that all which the antients had said of the Fortunate Islands, the garden of the Hesperides and Elysian fields, alluded to Sweden, pronouncing at the same time, his own country to be the source and perfection of European learning; and asserting, that letters and the art of writing, did not descend from Phœnicia to Greece, but from Phœnicia to Sweden; in the prosecution of which undertaking, he rummaged out, and expended in waste, much hidden learning.

XXIX. It may also be proper to observe here, that another opposite vicious extreme, if it is not derived from, arises in consequence of this prejudice. It has been remarked by some, of a modern Spanish author, that he has been guilty of unjustly denying to Spain, the honour of some glorious antiquities, with a view of being applauded as a sincere man among strangers. Perhaps this was not his motive, but that his criticism was defective, for want of being tempered with a due mixture of the indulgent and the severe; and that to avoid the imputation of flattery, he ran into the opposite offensive extreme; for

_Dum vitant stulti vitia, in contraria currunt._

SECT. VI.

XXX. But the national prejudice of which we have spoken hitherto, is, if we may so call it, an innocent vice compared to another, which by being more common, is more pernicious. I speak of that preposterous affection, which is not relative to a republic at large, but applies to a particular district or territory which we call our own. I do not deny, that by the term country, is understood not only the republic or state of which we are members, and which may be called our common country, but also the province, diocese, city or district, where every one drew his first breath, and which on that account may be termed his particular country; but it is certain, the phrase “love of our country,” cannot be supposed to be confined or apply to our country according to this second definition, but according to the first; for that is the sense, in which it is recommended and enforced, by examples, persuasions, and apophthegms, of historians, orators, and philosophers. The country to which we should sacrifice our lives in heroic arms, and which we ought to esteem superior to all our private interests, and as the creditor of all our possible obsequies and services, is that body of state, under which we are united in one civil government, and protected by, and bound to the observance of the same laws. Thus Spain is the proper object of the love of a Spaniard, France of a Frenchman, and Poland of a Polander. But this should be understood, not to relate to such people, who by migrating to, and settling in other countries, make themselves members of other states, in which case, the duty they owe to the country where they reside, and are protected, ought to prevail over the affection they bear to the country in which they were born; and on this distinction, we shall in the sequel make an important remark. The dividing of a kingdom into provinces or districts, which is done for the convenience of administering justice, and conducting other business of government, has a material influence over, and is in a great measure the cause of dividing men’s hearts.

XXXI. The particular or limited love of one’s country, instead of being useful to a state, is in many respects injurious and hurtful, because it induces a division in the minds of those, who ought to be reciprocally united for the sake of making more firm and stable, the bond of common society; and because also this limited love of our country, is an incentive to civil wars, and revolts against the sovereign power; for always when a particular province or district fancies itself aggrieved, all the individuals of it think the redressing the grievances of their injured country, an obligation superior to all others; and finally, this confined principle, is an obstacle to the right administration of justice among all classes of people, and in every judicial and ministerial department.

XXXII. This last inconvenience is so common and apparent, as to be hidden from no man; and what is worse, no one endeavours to hide it. This pestilence of partiality to countrymen is, to the perversion and corruption of good regulation, introduced and cherished in the most bare-faced manner, into those departments which are vested with the power of distributing honourable and useful employments. What sanctuary has been able to protect or preserve us, from the violencies of this declared enemy of reason and equity? How many hearts, inaccessible to the temptations of gold, insensible to the allurements of ambition, intrepid, and proof against the threats of power, have suffered themselves to be miserably deluded and perverted, by national passion? Now-a-days, if a man is a candidate for an office or employment, he always reckons upon as many protectors as he has countrymen, who have any concern or interest in the disposal of it. His pretensions being unreasonable, to a man swayed by national or provincial prejudice, are no objection, because the only merit with such a one, is the candidate’s being his countryman. We have seen men, in other respects of unimpeachable integrity, who were much infected with this malady; from hence I have been inclined to conclude, that this is an infernal machine, artfully invented by the Devil, to subdue those souls, who by all other ways are invincible; but alas, Achilles, although in one little part only, you are vulnerable, what does it avail you, if Paris, in shooting the arrow, has the skill and address to hit that little part?

SECT. VII.

XXXIII. I do not condemn that affection for our native soil, which does not operate to prejudice a third person. Aristotle’s employing his favour with Alexander, to procure the rebuilding the town of Stagira his native country, ruined by the soldiers of Philip, always appeared to me right and proper; and I condemn the indifference of Crates, whose city had suffered the same misfortune, for having, when Alexander asked him if he was desirous it should be rebuilt, answered, _Of what use would the rebuilding it be, if there should come another Alexander to destroy it afresh?_ How exceedingly and ridiculously affected was the behaviour of that philosopher, who lost to his countrymen so signal a benefit, for the sake of a cold apophthegm? The misfortune was, that no other opportune sentence of a contrary tendency occurred to the philosopher just at that time; for if there had, he would have accepted the favour offered by Alexander. I have observed, that there are no people more unfit to be consulted upon serious and weighty points of business, than those who pride themselves in speaking with grace and elegance; for they are always apt to warp their opinion towards that side, on which a striking expression occurs to them, and provided they deliver themselves with air and brilliancy, they do not embarrass themselves about a little false reasoning.

XXXIV. I say once more, that I do not condemn any innocent or moderate affection for our native land. A love extremely soft and tender, is better suited to women, and more proper for children just rising up in the world, than for men; and therefore I am of opinion, the divine Homer humanizes Ulysses to a degree of excess, when he paints him, amidst all the regales of Pheacia, panting and pining, to see the smoke arise on the mountains of Ithaca, his own country:

_Exoptans oculis surgentem cernere fumum_
_Natalis terræ._

This tenderness in one of the wisest of the Greeks was very puerile; but with all, there is not much inconvenience in viewing with tenderness the smoke of one’s country, provided the smoke does not blind the eyes of him who looks at it. Let him view the smoke of his own country; but alas, do not let him prefer it to the light and splendour of foreign ones; but this is what we see every day. He who by being placed at the head of an eminent department, has the disposal of various employments at his pleasure, can scarce find any persons properly qualified for those employments, but people of his own country. In vain it is represented to him, that these men are unfit to fill the post, and that there are others better qualified. He finds the smoke of his country so grateful an aromatick, that he would abandon for it the most brilliant lights of other places. O how strangely does this smoke blind men’s eyes! How wonderfully does it disorder and affect their heads!

XXXV. In truth, some sin in this particular with their eyes wide open; I speak of those, who with the view of forming a party to support their authority, promote as many of their countrymen as they possibly can, without paying the least attention to merit. This is not manifesting their love to their country, but to themselves, and is benefiting their own soil, as the earth is benefited by the labour of the husbandman, who does not bestow it with a view of improving the land, but of advantaging himself. These are open and declared enemies of a republic, because it being next to impossible, that one district can furnish people sufficiently qualified for such a variety of employments, the places are filled with unworthy objects; this, if it is not the greatest evil that can befall a state, at least ultimately disposes towards producing such an evil.

XXXVI. Of those, who exercise their passion for their countrymen, from a belief that they are the most deserving, I am at a loss what to say, although the motive of their partiality in this matter frequently appears to me a voluntary blindness; and if that is the case, they do not stand excused. When the excess of merit in the person set aside, is so notoriously superior to that of the man promoted, that it is manifest to all the world, except to him who dispensed the preferment, what doubt can there be, that he shut his eyes to avoid seeing it? or else, that the microscope of his passion magnified to his view, the virtues of the man preferred, and the defects of him neglected? There is scarce any man, who has not a portion of good and bad in his composition; a man without fault would be a miracle, and one without a single virtue would be a monster. This made St. Austin say, that gigantic vice was as rare to be found among us, as eminent virtue: _Sicut magna pietas paucorum est, ita et magna impietas nihilominus paucorum est._ (Serm. 10. de verbis Domini.) What happens then is, that passion, being to chuse between persons of unequal merit, magnifies what is good in the bad man, and also what is bad in the good one. There is not a more unfaithful balance to weigh merit in, than that of passion and prejudice; but this is what men commonly use for the purpose. This caused David to say, men are false in their balances: _Mendaces filii hominum in stateris._ Job, to express the greatness and power of God, says, that he is able to give weight to the wind: _qui fecit ventis pondus_. But I am not clear in what sense to understand this, because I also see, that the powerful of the world in the balance of their passion, frequently give weight, and much weight to the air. What do you see in that person they have just raised? Nothing solid, nothing but air and vanity; but to this air, the great man who exalted him gave more weight, than to the gold of the other person who was his competitor for the office. But how was this done? Why, together with the air, he put earth into the scale, I mean the earth of the country in which he was born, and this earth weighs very heavy in that balance.

XXXVII. It happens in the contentions about occupying places, as it happened in the conflict between Hercules and Antæus. Hercules was much more valiant and powerful than the other, and threw him repeatedly to the ground; but the falls, enabled Antæus to renew the combat with redoubled vigour, because by his contact with the earth, his strength was doubled. The explanation of the matter is this: The antients under the veil of fables, concealed physical and moral maxims, and according to the heathen mythology, which was the term they used to signify the exposition of those mysterious fictions, Antæus was the son of the Earth. I believe, to make this fable apply to the present question, we need say no more, than that as things go in the world, every country by its recommendation, gives strength to its sons to overcome strangers, although they are people of superior abilities and vigour. Hercules lifted Antæus from the ground, and kept him suspended in the air, by which means he found no difficulty in overcoming him. It were much to be wished, that upon many occasions, in order to determine the worth of people, they should be examined divested of all favour and advantage they can derive from belonging to a particular country, for then it would be much better known to whom the preference is due.

SECT. VIII.

XXXVIII. These men of national genius and prejudice, whose spirits are all flesh and blood, and whose breasts are always in contact with the earth, like that of a snake, do in a community, what the old serpent did in paradise, or as Luzbel did in Heaven, that is, introduce into it, seditions, revolts, schisms, and battles. No fire assails a civil edifice so violently, as the flame of national passion, for it consumes the very stones of the fabric, levels merit to the ground, and makes reason tremble, excites tumults and insults, and makes way for the triumphant entry of ambition. Those hearts which ought to be cordially united by the bond of brotherly love, that bond being broken asunder, are miserably divided, and breathe nothing but vengeance and rancour. They form parties, inlist auxiliaries, and range their forces; but alas! in the end both the victors and vanquished are unfortunate and unhappy; the last lose the day and their patience, and the first by their conquest lose themselves.

XXXIX. In no words of sacred writ, is a call to a generous and virtuous life painted in more lively colours, than in those of the Psalmist, Psalm xliv. _Mark me, my Son, incline your ear, and attend to my words, you must forget your townsmen, and the house of your father._ But how greatly does he deviate from the precept contained in this admonition, who so far from forgetting his townsmen, and the house of his father, treasures up in his heart and memory, not only a house or a town, but a whole province or kingdom.

XL. Alexander, after he had conquered Persia, caused the Macedonian soldiers to marry Persian women, to the end, says Plutarch, that forgetting their native land, they should only esteem as their countrymen, those who were good, and regard as strangers those who were bad: _Ut mundum pro patria, castra pro arce, bonos pro cognatis, malos pro peregrinis agnoscerent._

XLI. It is an apophthegm, of many learned and wise men among the Gentiles, that to a man of a strong and liberal mind, all the world is his country. He who attaches his heart to that corner of the earth in which he was born, cannot look upon all the world as his country, nor himself as a citizen of it, and therefore the world should despise him, as a narrow-minded and mean-spirited person.

XLII. I believe notwithstanding, that there is something figurative contained in the words of the sentences before quoted, for mankind can never be understood to be exempted from the love and service they owe to the republic of which they are members, in preference to all other states and kingdoms; but I apprehend also, that this obligation should not be confined to a republic, because we were born within its limits, but because we are members of its society; therefore, he who has legally transferred his residence from the kingdom in which he was born, to another different one, where he has settled himself, and taken up his abode, contracts with respect to that kingdom, the same obligations he owed to that in which he was born and nursed, and he ought to regard it as the country to which he belongs. This is a distinction, that was not rightly understood by many great men of antiquity; and for this reason, we see in various authors of note, some actions celebrated as heroic, which ought to have been condemned as infamous. Demaratus King of Sparta, when he was unjustly dethroned and driven out of his kingdom by his own subjects, was kindly received and protected by the Persians. He lived among them as a member of the Persian empire, and owed to that country, besides the obligation of gratitude, the duty of a subject; but mark the sequel: the Persians meditate a military expedition against the Lacedemonians; and Demaratus, who is let into the secret, communicates the design to the Spartans, in order that they might be prepared to defeat the enterprize. Herodotus, and many other authors, celebrate this action, as a commendable mark of the glorious and heroic love which Demaratus entertained for his country; but I say, it was a perfidious, base, unworthy, and treacherous act; because in virtue of the antecedent circumstances, the obligation of his loyalty, together with his person, had been transferred from Lacedemonia to Persia.

XLIII. To conclude: I assert that if by reason of being born in it, we contract any obligation to a particular district or place, that obligation is inferior to, and ought to give place to every other christian or political one whatever. Surely the difference of being born in this or that country is not so material, that this should out-weigh every other consideration; therefore we ought never to prefer our countryman only because he is our countryman, except in those cases, where there is a perfect equality of all the other circumstances.

XLIV. In superior rulers, I don’t even with this limitation, admit of any partiality, with respect to countrymen, for the following reasons: first, because without being perfectly divested of this passion, it is hardly possible in one instance or another, to shun the danger of passing from favour to injustice. Secondly, that in whatever manner, favour to our countrymen is limited and restrained, we are apt to fall into an acceptation or preferable choice of persons, which by all those who govern ought to be studiously avoided. Thirdly, superior rulers being truly the fathers of their people, their impartial affection for them should be regarded as a consideration so incomparably superior to all others, that it ought to stifle and suffocate every kind of motive or inclination to preference, except that, which is derived from superior merit. It would be ridiculous in a father to love one child better than another, only because this was born in his own town or city, and the mother was delivered of the other in a different place, in consequence of her being from home on a journey. Therefore all those who govern, ought ever to retain in their hearts and memories, the maxim of the famous queen of Carthage, who being informed that the Trojans, in consequence of her marrying Eneas, entertained hopes of receiving superior indulgences to the Tyrians from her, declared her perfect indifference of affection for them all as a queen in the following words:

_Tros, Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur._

SECT. IX.

XLV. Having spoken in this discourse, of the favour that may be shewed to a countryman in preference to a stranger, in case he is a man of equal merit, I thought it would not be improper here, to take notice of a moral point, which frequently occurs in practice, and in which I have often seen men mistake, who in other respects are far from absurd. Those, who have annexed to their charges the distribution of honourable and useful employments, if they have not a perfect knowledge of the competitors for a vacant place, commonly avail themselves of judicial or extrajudicial informations touching their merits. This is a case that often occurs in the appointment to such professorships in many universities, as are in the disposal of the king, or his supreme council; and in these instances, all the doctors of this university of Oveido give their information to the royal council promiscuously. It is to be supposed, that the person, who by his own or delegated authority appoints to the office, when two persons of equal merit are proposed to him, may very consistently chuse which he pleases; but with respect to the equality of merit, if he is a stranger to the parties, he must be guided by the informations he receives; and I have seen it very common, when they had no just reason for doing it, for people to give their information in favour of the man they liked best, and I have known them go so far, as not only to recommend him in preference to his competitor, but to represent him as the only person qualified to fill the vacant office.

XLVI. I call this an error, because that in my opinion, such an information upon the face of it, is injurious and void of all probability, which I shall endeavour to demonstrate, by exposing the malice and indirect proceeding of him, who between two equal subjects, Peter and John for example, gives his information in favour of Peter, in preference to John; for I perceive in such behaviour, not only one, but three serious and distinct offences. And first, he offends materially in his information, against the virtue of legal and impartial justice, which requires, that he should represent people according to the true degree of their merits; but he swerves from this principle, who represents Peter as superior to John, when he is not so in reality. Secondly, he behaves unworthily and unjustly to his Prince, by usurping and preoccupying the right, which he has to chuse between the parties. Thirdly, he is guilty of injustice to the said John, who has a right to be represented according to the true degree of merit he possesses; and the proposing him as inferior to Peter, when in truth he is equal to him, is doing him a manifest injury, which besides prejudicing him with regard to other contingencies, renders it impossible in this instance, for him to partake of the king’s grace of chusing him in preference to his competitor Peter.