Book XIX

Trade carried on between persons of the most opposite secte, has lessened that religious hatred which was the cause of their divisions. Separated by deserts, without any communication of trade or voyages, they had only a present and immediate interest to fettle. The right system of politics if there were any politics at a time when arts, literature, and commerce had not yet opened a communication among people, should have been, for the princes to have jointly attacked that particular power that had put itself into a state of continual war. The multitude, reduced to poverty, and become the objects of contempt, having seen all-powerful bodies brought low one after another, have at least loved in their monarch the enemy of their enemies. An English monk applied himself to the practice of chemistry, and paving the way for the invention of gun-powder, which was to bring America into subjection to Europe, opened the avenues of true science by experimental philosophy.

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