the rest of the Earth the culture of alimentary grains and roots requires a great multitude of arts and preparations. Suppose him to have collected around him every blessing that his heart can desire, the love and the pleasure which flow from abundance, avarice, thieves, the incursions of the enemy, disturb his enjoyment. He must have laws, judges, magazines, fortresses, confederacies, and regiments, to protect from without and from within his ill-fated corn-field. Finally, when it is in his power to enjoy with all the tranquillity of a sage, langour takes possession of his mind; he must have comedies, balls, masquerades, amusements to prevent him from reasoning with himself.

It is impossible to conceive how a Nation could exist with the animal passions simply. The sentiments of natural justice, which are the basis of legislation, are not the results of our mutual wants, as has been by some pretended. Our passions are not retrogressive; they have ourselves alone for their centre. A family of savages, living in the midst of plenty, would be no more concerned about the misery of their neighbours perishing for want, than we concern ourselves at Paris to think that our sugar and coffee are costing Africa rivers of tears.

Reason itself, united to the passions, would only stimulate their ferocity; for it would supply them with new arguments long after their desires were gratified. It is, in most men, nothing more than the relation between beings and their wants, that is their personal interest. Let us examine the effect of it, combined with love and ambition, the two tyrants of human life.

VOL. III.

C

Let

Let us first suppose a state entirely governed by Love, such as that on the banks of the Lignon, imagined by the ingenious d'Urfeius. I beg leave to ask, Who would be at the trouble of building houses there, and of labouring the ground? Must we not suppose, that such a country would contain servants whose industry should compensate the idleness of their masters? Will not those servants be reduced to the necessity of abstaining from making love, in order that their masters may be incessantly employed in it? Besides, in what manner are the old people of both sexes to pass their time? A fine spectacle for them truly, to behold their children always indulging in the dalliance of the tender passion! Would not such a spectacle become to them a perpetual source of regret, of ill-humour, of jealousy, as it is among those of our own country? Such a government, in truth, were it even in the islands of the South Sea, under groves of the cocoa and bread-fruit trees, where there was nothing to do but to eat and make love, would soon be torn with discord and oppressed with languor.

But, on the supposition that the principle of social reason were to oblige every family to labour each for it's own support, and to introduce more variety into their way of living, by inviting to it our arts and sciences; it would quickly accelerate their destruction. We must by no means depend on ever hearing there any of those affecting dialogues which d'Urfeius puts into the mouth of Astræa and Celadon; they are dictated neither by animal love nor by enlightened reason. Both of these employ

5

employ a very different logic. When a lover, illuminated there with the science which he had borrowed of us, wished to inspire his mistress with a mutual passion, if however it were needful to employ discourse in order to accomplish this, he would talk to her of springs, of masses, of attractions, of fermentations, of the electric spark, and of the other physical causes which determine, according to our modern systems, the propensities of the two sexes, and the movements of the passions. Political reasons would interpose, and affix the seal to their union, by stipulating, in the melancholy and mercenary language of our contracts, for dowfies, maintenances, redemptions, pin-monies, postobits. But the personal reason of each contracting. party would quickly separate them. As soon as a man saw his wife overtaken with disease, he would say to her: "My temperament calls for a wife who'

ઉંદ

enjoys health, and constrains me to abandon you." She would answer him undoubtedly, in order to preserve consistency: "You do well to obey the dic"tates of Nature. I should in like manner, have "looked out for another husband had you been in'

my place." A son would say to his aged and declining father: "You begot me for your pleasure, it is time that I should live for mine." Where should we find citizens disposed to unite for maintaining the laws of such a Society? Where find soldiers disposed to meet death in defence of it, and a magistrate who would undertake to govern it? I say nothing of an infinite number of other disorders, which follow in the train of that blind and headstrong passion, even when directed by cool and dispassionate reason,

C2

If,

If, on the other hand, a Nation were under the dominion of ambition solely, it would come still sooner to destruction; either from external enemies, or by means of it's own citizens. It is, first, difficult to imagine how it could be reduced to form, under the authority of one Legislator, for how can we conceive the possibility of ambitious. men voluntarily submitting to another man? Those who have united them, as Romulus, Mahomet, and all founders of Nations, have commanded attention and obedience only by speaking in the name of the DEITY. But supposing this union by whatever means accomplished, Could such an association ever be happy? Let Historians extol conquering Rome ever so highly, Is it credible that her citizens then deserved the appellation of fortunate? What, while they were spreading terror over the Globe, and causing floods of tears to flow, were there at Rome no hearts oppressed with terror, and no eye overflowing for the loss of a son, of a father, of a husband, of a lover? Were the slaves, who constituted by far the greatest part of her inhabitants, were they happy? Was the General of the Roman army himself happy, crowned with laurels as he was, and mounted on a triumphal car, around which, in conformity to à military law, his own soldiers were singing songs in which his faults were exposed, to prevent his waxing proud and forgetting himself? And when Providence permitted Paulus Emilius to triumph over a King of the Macedonians, and his poor children, who stretched out their little hands to the Roman People to excite compassion, it was so ordered that the con queror

queror should at that vary season suffer the loss of his own children, that no one might be allowed to triumph with impunity over the tears of Mankind.

This very People, however, so disposed to pursue their own glory through the calamity of others, were obliged, in order to dissemble the horror of it, to veil the tears of the Nations with the interest of the Gods, as we disguise with fire the flesh of the animals which is to serve for food. Rome, following the order of destiny, was to become at length the capital of the World. She armed her ambition with a celestial reason, in order to render her victorious over powers the most formidable, and to curb by means of it the ferocity of her own citizens, by inuring them to the practice of sublime virtue. What would they have become, had they given themselves up without restraint to that furious instinct? They would have resembled the savages of America, who burn their enemies alive, and devour their flesh still streaming with blood. This Rome at last experienced, when her Religion presented no longer any thing to her enlightened inhabitants except unmeaning imagery. Then were seen the two passions natural to the heart of Man, ambition and love, inviting to a residence within her walls the luxury of Asia, the corruptive arts of Greece, proscriptions, murders, poisonings, conflagrations, and giving her up a prey to barbarous Nations. The Theutates of the Gauls then issuing from th forests of the North, and arriving at the Capitol, made the Roman Jupiter to tremble in his turn. Our reasons of state are in modern times less sublime, but are not for that less fatal to the repose