On the whole, my lord, if political society, in whatever form, has still made the many the property of the few; if it has introduced labors unnecessary, vices and diseases unknown, and pleasures incompatible with nature; if in all countries it abridges the lives of millions, and renders those of millions more utterly abject and miserable, shall we still worship so destructive an idol, and daily sacrifice to it our health, our liberty, and our peace?  Or shall we pass by this monstrous heap of absurd notions, and abominable practices, thinking we have sufficiently discharged our duty in exposing the trifling, cheats, and ridiculous juggles of a few mad, designing, or ambitious priests?  Alas! my lord, we labor under a mortal consumption, whilst we are so anxious about the cure of a sore finger.  For has not this leviathan of civil power overflowed the earth with a deluge of blood, as if he were made to disport and play therein?  We have shown that political society, on a moderate calculation, has been the means of murdering several times the number of inhabitants now upon the earth, during its short existence, not upwards of four thousand years in any accounts to be depended on.  But we have said nothing of the other, and perhaps as bad, consequence of these wars, which have spilled such seas of blood, and reduced so many millions to a merciless slavery.  But these are only the ceremonies performed in the porch of the political temple.  Much more horrid ones are seen as you enter it.  The several species of government vie with each other in the absurdity of their constitutions, and the oppression which they make their subjects endure.  Take them under what form you please, they are in effect but a despotism, and they fall, both in effect and appearance too, after a very short period, into that cruel and detestable species of tyranny:  which I rather call it, because we have been educated under another form, than that this is of worse consequences to mankind.  For the free governments, for the point of their space, and the moment of their duration, have felt more confusion, and committed more flagrant acts of tyranny, than the most perfect despotic governments which we have ever known.  Turn your eye next to the labyrinth of the law, and the iniquity conceived in its intricate recesses.  Consider the ravages committed in the bowels of all commonwealths by ambition, by avarice, envy, fraud, open injustice, and pretended friendship; vices which could draw little support from a state of nature, but which blossom and flourish in the rankness of political society.  Revolve our whole discourse; add to it all those reflections which your own good understanding shall suggest, and make a strenuous effort beyond the reach of vulgar philosophy, to confess that the cause of artificial society is more defenceless even than that of artificial religion; that it is as derogatory from the honor of the Creator, as subversive of human reason, and productive of infinitely more mischief to the human race.