Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A VIEW OF THE STATE OF EUROPE. 79 utmost force. They are excited to act not by the Sect. ir. distant objects, or the refined speculations, which interest or affect men in polished societies, but by their present feelings. The insults of an enemy kindle resentment; the success of a rival tribe awakens emulation: these passions communicate from breast to breast, and all the members of the community, with united ardour, rush into the field in order to gratify their revenge, or to acquire distinction. But in widely-extended states, such as the great kingdoms of Europe at the beginning of the fifteenth century, where there is little intercourse between the distant members of the community, and where every great enterprise requires previous concert and long preparation, nothing can rouse and call forth their united strength, but the absolute command of a despot, or the powerful influence of regular policy. Of the former, the vast empires in the East are an example; the irresistible mandate of the sovereign reaches the most remote provinces of his dominions, and compels whatever number of his subjects he is pleased to summon, to follow his standard. The kingdoms of Europe, in the present age, are an instance of the latter; the prince, by the less violent, but no less effectual operation of laws and a well-regulated government, is enabled to avail himself of the whole force of his state, and to employ it in enterprises which require strenuous and persevering efforts. But, at the opening of the fifteenth century, the The power political constitution in all the kingdoms of Europe was very different from either of these states of go- vernment. The several monarchs, though they had somewhat enlarged the boundaries of prerogative by successful encroachments on the immunities and privil...