“By ignorance and cupidity, a secret war, fermenting in the bosom of every state, has separated citizen from citizen; and the same society has divided itself into oppressors and oppressed, into masters and slaves; by these, the heads of a nation, sometimes insolent and audacious, have forged its chains within its own bowels; and mercenary avarice has founded political despotism.”
C. F. Volney, The Ruins, or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires (1793; first English-language edition, 1802)