To expect, therefore, that the arts and sciences should take their first rise in a monarchy, is to
expect a contradiction. Before these refinements have taken place, the monarch is ignorant and
uninstructed; and not having knowledge sufficient to make him sensible of the necessity of
balancing his government upon general laws, he delegates his full power to all inferior
magistrates. This barbarous policy debases the people, and for ever prevents all improvements.
Were it possible, that, before science were known in the world, a monarch could possess so
much wisdom as to become a legislator, and govern his people by law, not by the arbitrary will
of their fellow-subjects, it might be possible for that species of government to be the first nursery
of arts and sciences. But that supposition seems scarcely to be consistent or rational.
I.
XIV.12