pose for the happiness of the People, and of the principal orders of the State, in so far as I have been permitted to submit my ideas to the public eye. Many philosophers and politicians have declaimed against the disorders of Society without troubling themselves to enquire into their causes, and still less into the remedies which might be ap. plied. Those of the greatest ability have viewed our evils only in detail, and have recommended palliatives merely. Some have proscribed luxury; others give no quarter to celibacy, and would load with the charge of a family persons who have not the means of supplying their personal necessities. Some are for incarcerating all the beggars; others would prohibit the wretched women of pleasure to appear in the streets. They would act in the manner which that physician docs, who, in order to cure the pimples on the body of a person out of order, uses all his skill to force back the humours. Politicians, you apply the remedy to the head, because the pain is in the forehead; but the mischief is in the nerves; it is for the heart you must provide a cure it is the people whose health you

must endeavour to restore.

Should some great minister, animated with a noble ambition to procure for us internal happiness, and to extend our power externally, have the courage to undertake a re-establishment of things, he must in his course of procedure imitate that of Nature. She acts in every case slowly, and by means of reactions. I répeat it, the cause of the prodigious power of gold, which has robbed the people at once of their morality

5

morality and of their subsistence, is in the venality of public employments. That of the beggary, which at this day extends to seven millions of subjects, consists in the enormous accumulation of landed and official property. That of female prostitution is to be imputed, on the one hand, to extreme indigence; and on the other to the celibacy of two millions of men. The unprofitable superabundance of the idle and censorious burghers in our second and third rate cities, arises from the imposts which degrade the inhabitants of the country. The prejudices of the nobility are kept alive by the resentments of those who want the advantage of birth; and all these evils, and others. innumerable, physical and intellectual, spring up out of the misery of the People. It is the indigence of the People which produces such swarms of players, courtezans, highwaymen, incendiaries, licentious scholars, calumniators, flatterers, hypocrites, mendicants, kept-mistresses, quacks of all conditions, and that infinite multitude of corrupted wretches, who, incapable of coming to any thing by their virtues, endeavour to procure bread and consideration by their vices. In vain will you oppose to these plans of finance, projects of equalization, of taxes and tithes, of ordinances of Police, of arrets of Parliaments; all your efforts will be fruitless. The indigence of the People is a mighty river, which is every year collecting an increase of strength, which is sweeping away before it every opposing mound, and which will issue in a total subversion of order and government.

To this physical cause of our distresses must be added another purely moral! I mean our education. I shall venture to suggest a few reflections on this subject, though it far exceeds my highest powers: but if it be the most important of our abuses, it appears to me, on the other hand, the most easily susceptible of reformation; and this reform appears to me so absolutely necessary, that without it all the rest goes for nothing.

STUDY

STUDY FOURTEENTH.

OF EDUCATION.

To what higher object," says Plutarch,* "could

"Numa have directed his attention, than to the "culture of early infancy, and to uniformity in "the treatment of young persons; in the view of "preventing the collision of different manners, and "turbulency of spirit, arising from diversity of na"ture? Thus he proposed to harmonize the minds "of men, in a state of maturity, from their having "been, in childhood, trained in the same habits of "order, and cast into the same moulds of virtue. "This, independent of other advantages, greatly "contributed likewise to the support of the Laws "of Lycurgus; for respect to the oath, by which "the Spartans had bound themselves, must have "produceda much more powerful effect, from "his having by early instruction and nurture dyed "in the wool, if I may use the expression, the mo"rals of the young, and made them suck in with "the milk from their nurse's breast the love of his "Laws and Institutions."

Here is a decision which completely condemns our mode of education, by pronouncing the eulogium of that of Sparta. I do not hesitate a single moment to ascribe to our modern education, the *Comparison of Numa and Lycurgus.

restless

restless, ambitious, spiteful, pragmatical, and intolerant spirit of most Europeans. The effects of it are visible in the miseries of the Nations. It is remarkable, that those which have been most agitated internally and externally, are precisely the Nations, among which our boasted style of education has flourished the most. The truth of this may be ascertained by stepping from country to country, from age to age. Politicians have imagined, that they could discern the cause of public misfortunes in the different forms of Government. But Turkey is quiet, and England is frequently in a state of agitation. All political forms are indifferent to the happiness of a State, as has been said, provided the people are happy. We might have added, and provided the children are so likewise.

The Philosopher Laloubere, Envoy from Louis XIV. to Siam, says, in the account which he gives of his mission, that the Asiatics laugh us to scorn, when we boast to them of the excellence of the Christian Religion, as contributing to the happiness of States. They ask, on reading our Histories, How is it possible that our Religion should be so humane, while we wage war ten times more frequently than they do? What would they say then did they see among us our perpetual law-suits, the malicious censoriousness and calumny of our societies, the jealousy of corps, the quarrels of the populace, the duels of the better sort, and our animosities of every kind, nothing similar to which is to be seen in Asia, in Africa, among the Tartars, or among Savages, on the testimony of missionaries themselves? For my own part, I discern the

cause