at the end, are not at all the same persons?  On considering the strange and unaccountable fancies and contrivances of artificial reason, I have somewhere called this earth the Bedlam of our system.  Looking now upon the effects of some of those fancies, may we not with equal reason call it likewise the Newgate and the Bridewell of the universe?  Indeed the blindness of one part of mankind co-operating with the frenzy and villany of the other, has been the real builder of this respectable fabric of political society:  and as the blindness of mankind has caused their slavery, in return their state of slavery is made a pretence for continuing them in a state of blindness; for the politician will tell you gravely, that their life of servitude disqualifies the greater part of the race of man for a search of truth, and supplies them with no other than mean and insufficient ideas.  This is but too true; and this is one of the reasons for which I blame such institutions.

In a misery of this sort, admitting some few lenitives, and those too but a few, nine parts in ten of the whole race of mankind drudge through life.  It may be urged perhaps, in palliation of this, that at least the rich few find a considerable and real benefit from the wretchedness of the many.  But is this so in fact?  Let us examine the point with a little more attention.  For this purpose the rich in all societies may he thrown into two classes.  The first is of those who are powerful as well as rich, and conduct the operations of the vast political machine.  The other is of those who employ their riches wholly in the acquisition of pleasure.  As to the first sort, their continual care and anxiety, their toilsome days, and sleepless nights, are next to proverbial.  These circumstances are sufficient almost to level their condition to that of the unhappy majority; but there are other circumstances which place them, in a far lower condition.  Not only their understandings labor continually, which is the severest labor, but their hearts are torn by the worst, most troublesome, and insatiable of all passions, by avarice, by ambition, by fear and jealousy.  No part of the mind has rest.  Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue.  Pity, benevolence, friendship, are things almost unknown in high stations. Verae amicitiae rarissime inveniuntur in iis qui in honoribus reque publica versantur, says Cicero.  And indeed courts are the schools where cruelty, pride, dissimulation, and treachery are studied and taught in the most vicious perfection.  This is a point so clear and acknowledged, that if it did not make a necessary part of my subject, I should pass it by entirely.  And this has hindered me from drawing at full length, and in the most striking colors, this shocking picture of the degeneracy and wretchedness of human nature, in that part which is vulgarly thought its happiest and most amiable state.  You know from what originals I could copy such pictures.  Happy are they who know enough of them to know the little value of the possessors of such things, and of all that they possess; and happy they who have been snatched from that post of danger which they occupy, with the remains of their virtue; loss of honors, wealth, titles, and even the loss of one’s country, is nothing in balance with so great an advantage.