_Cortez_.--Is this the wisdom of a great legislator? I have heard some
of your countrymen compare you to Solon. Did Solon, think you, give laws
to a people, and leave those laws and that people at the mercy of every
invader? The first business of legislature is to provide a military
strength that may defend the whole system. If a house is built in a land
of robbers, without a gate to shut or a bolt or bar to secure it, what
avails it how well-proportioned or how commodious the architecture of it
may be? Is it richly furnished within? the more it will tempt the hands
of violence and of rapine to seize its wealth. The world, William Penn,
is all a land of robbers. Any state or commonwealth erected therein must
be well fenced and secured by good military institutions; or, the happier
it is in all other respects, the greater will be its danger, the more
speedy its destruction. Perhaps the neighbouring English colonies may
for a while protect yours; but that precarious security cannot always
preserve you. Your plan of government must be changed, or your colony
will be lost. What I have said is also applicable to Great Britain
itself. If an increase of its wealth be not accompanied with an increase
of its force that wealth will become the prey of some of the neighbouring
nations, in which the martial spirit is more prevalent than the
commercial. And whatever praise may be due to its civil institutions, if
they are not guarded by a wise system of military policy, they will be
found of no value, being unable to prevent their own dissolution.

_Penn_.--These are suggestions of human wisdom. The doctrines I held
were inspired; they came from above.

_Cortez_.--It is blasphemy to say that any folly could come from the
Fountain of Wisdom. Whatever is inconsistent with the great laws of
Nature and with the necessary state of human society cannot possibly have