It is
like preaching to the worm who crawls on the ground how much better it
would be for him if he were an eagle.
Now it is a universally observed fact that the two evil dispositions
in question, the disposition to prefer a man's selfish interests to
those which he shares with other people, and his immediate and
direct interests to those which are indirect and remote, are
characteristics most especially called forth and fostered by the
possession of power. The moment a man, or a class of men, find
themselves with power in their hands, the man's individual interest,
or the class's separate interest, acquires an entirely new degree of
importance in their eyes. Finding themselves worshipped by others,
they become worshippers of themselves, and think themselves entitled
to be counted at a hundred times the value of other people; while
the facility they acquire of doing as they like without regard to
consequences insensibly weakens the habits which make men look forward
even to such consequences as affect themselves. This is the meaning of
the universal tradition, grounded on universal experience, of men's
being corrupted by power. Every one knows how absurd it would be to
infer from what a man is or does when in a private station, that he
will be and do exactly the like when a despot on a throne; where the
bad parts of his human nature, instead of being restrained and kept in
subordination by every circumstance of his life and by every person
surrounding him, are courted by all persons, and ministered to by
all circumstances.
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