Their great problem is, to find a substitute for all the principles which hitherto have been employed to regulate the human will and action.  They find dispositions in the mind of such force and quality as may fit men, far better than the old morality, for the purposes of such a state as theirs, and may go much further in supporting their power and destroying their enemies.  They have therefore chosen a selfish, flattering, seductive, ostentatious vice, in the place of plain duty.  True humility, the basis of the Christian system, is the low, but deep and firm foundation of all real virtue.  But this, as very painful in the practice, and little imposing in the appearance, they have totally discarded.  Their object is to merge all natural and all social sentiment in inordinate vanity.  In a small degree, and conversant in little things, vanity is of little moment.  When full-grown, it is the worst of vices, and the occasional mimic of them all.  It makes the whole man false.  It leaves nothing sincere or trustworthy about him.  His best qualities are poisoned and perverted by it, and operate exactly as the worst.  When your lords had many writers as immoral as the object of their statue (such as Voltaire and others) they chose Rousseau, because in him that peculiar vice which they wished to erect into ruling virtue was by far the most conspicuous.

We have had the great professor and founder of the philosophy of vanity in England.  As I had good opportunities of knowing his proceedings almost from day to day, he left no doubt on my mind that he entertained no principle, either to influence his heart or to guide his understanding, but vanity.  With this vice he was possessed to a degree little short of madness.  It is from the same deranged, eccentric vanity, that this, the insane Socrates of the National Assembly, was impelled to publish a mad confession of his mad faults, and to attempt a new sort of glory from bringing hardily to light the obscure and vulgar vices which we know may sometimes be blended with eminent talents.  He has not observed on the nature of vanity who does not know that it is omnivorous,—­that it has no choice in its food,—­that it is fond to talk even of its own faults and vices, as what will excite surprise and draw attention, and what will pass at worst for openness and candor.

It was this abuse and perversion, which vanity makes even of hypocrisy, which has driven Rousseau to record a life not so much as checkered or spotted here and there with virtues, or even distinguished by a single good action.  It is such a life he chooses to offer to the attention of mankind.  It is such a life that, with a wild defiance, he flings in the face of his Creator, whom he acknowledges only to brave.  Your Assembly, knowing how much more powerful example is found than precept, has chosen this man (by his own account without a single virtue) for a model.  To him they erect their first statue.  From him they commence their series of honors and distinctions.