I need not enlarge on those torrents of silent and inglorious blood which have glutted the thirsty sands of Afric, or discolored the polar snow, or fed the savage forests of America for so many ages of continual war.
Shall I, to justify my calculations from the charge of extravagance, add to the account those skirmishes which happen in all wars, without being singly of sufficient dignity in mischief, to merit a place in history, but which by their frequency compensate for this comparative innocence?
shall I inflame the account by those general massacres which have devoured whole cities and nations; those wasting pestilences, those consuming famines, and all those furies that follow in the train of war?
I have no need to exaggerate; and I have purposely avoided a parade of eloquence on this occasion.

I should despise it upon any occasion; else in mentioning these slaughters, it is obvious how much the whole might be heightened, by an affecting description of the horrors that attend the wasting of kingdoms, and sacking of cities.

But I do not write to the vulgar, nor to that which only governs the vulgar, their passions.

I go upon a naked and moderate calculation, just enough, without a pedantical exactness, to give your lordship some feeling of the effects of political society.

I charge the whole of these effects on political society.