9.  I would not be misapprehended, and supposed to recommend good-breeding, thus prophaned and prostituted to the purposes of guilt and perfidy; but I think I may justly infer from it, to what a degree the accomplishment of good-breeding must adorn and enforce virtue and truth, when it can thus soften the outrages and deformity of vice and falsehood.  I am sorry to be obliged to confess, that my native country is not perhaps the seat of the most perfect good-breeding, though I really believe, that it yields to none in hearty and sincere civility, as far as civility is (and to a certain degree it is) an inferior moral duty of doing as one would be done by.

10.  If France exceeds us in that particular, the incomparable author of L’Esprit des Loix accounts for it very impartially, and I believe very truly.  “If my countrymen,” says he, “are the best bred people in the world, it is only because they are the vainest.”  It is certain that their good-breeding and attention, by flattering the vanity and self-love of others, repay their own with interest.  It is a general commerce, usefully carried on by a barter of attentions, and often without one grain of solid merit, by way of medium, to make up the balance.

11.  It were to be wished that good-breeding were in general thought a more essential part in the education of our youth, especially of distinction, than at present it seems to be.  It might even be substituted in the room of some academical studies, that take up a great deal of time to very little purpose; or, at least, it might usefully share some of those many hours, that are so frequently employed upon a coach-box, or in stables.  Surely those, who by their rank and fortune are called to adorn courts, ought at least not to disgrace, them by their manners.

12.  But I observe with concern, that it is the fashion for our youth of both sexes to brand good-breeding with the name of ceremony and formality.  As such they ridicule and explode it, and adopt in its stead, an offensive carelessness and inattention, to the diminution, I will venture to say, even of their own pleasures, if they know what true pleasures are.  Love and friendship necessarily produce, and justly authorize familiarity; but then good-breeding must mark out its bounds, and say, thus far shalt thou go, and no farther; for I have known many a passion and many a friendship, degraded, weakened, and at last (if I may use the expression) wholly flattened away, by an unguarded and illiberal familiarity.

13.  Nor is good-breeding less the ornament and cement of common social life:  it connects, it endears, and at the same time that it indulges the just liberty, restrains that indecent licentiousness of conversation, which alienates and provokes.  Great talents make a man famous, great merit makes him respected, and great learning makes him esteemed; but good breeding alone can make him beloved.