how a man’s not believing in God can teach him to cultivate the earth with the least of any additional skill or encouragement. “Diis immortalibus sero,” said an old Roman, when he held one handle of the plough, whilst Death held the other.  Though you were to join in the commission all the directors of the two Academies to the directors of the Caisse d’Escompte, an old experienced peasant is worth them all.  I have got more information upon a curious and interesting branch of husbandry, in one short conversation with an old Carthusian monk, than I have derived from all the bank directors that I have ever conversed with.  However, there is no cause for apprehension from the meddling of money-dealers with rural economy.  These gentlemen are too wise in their generation.  At first, perhaps, their tender and susceptible imaginations may be captivated with the innocent and unprofitable delights of a pastoral life; but in a little time they will find that agriculture is a trade much more laborious and much less lucrative than that which they had left.  After making its panegyric, they will turn their backs on it, like their great precursor and prototype.  They may, like him, begin by singing, “Beatus ille”—­but what will be the end?

    Haec ubi locutus foenerator Alphius,
      Jam jam futurus rusticus,
    Omnem relegit Idibus pecuniam,
      Quaerit Calendis ponere.

They will cultivate the Caisse d’Eglise, under the sacred auspices of this prelate, with much more profit than its vineyards and its corn-fields.  They will employ their talents according to their habits and their interests.  They will not follow the plough, whilst they can direct treasuries and govern provinces.

Your legislators, in everything new, are the very first who have founded a commonwealth upon gaming, and infused this spirit into it as its vital breath.  The great object in these politics is to metamorphose France from a great kingdom into one great play-table,—­to turn its inhabitants into a nation of gamesters,—­to make speculation as extensive as life,—­to mix it with all its concerns,—­and to divert the whole of the hopes and fears of the people from their usual channels into the impulses, passions, and superstitions of those who live on chances.  They loudly proclaim their opinion, that this their present system of a republic cannot possibly exist without this kind of gaming fund, and that the very thread of its life is spun out of the staple of these speculations.  The old gaming in funds was mischievous enough, undoubtedly; but it was so only to individuals.  Even when it had its greatest extent, in the Mississippi and South Sea, it affected but few, comparatively; where it extends further, as in lotteries, the spirit has but a single object.  But where the law, which in most circumstances forbids, and in none countenances gaming, is itself debauched, so as to reverse its nature and policy, and expressly to force the subject