the vast Warburtonian system, who had already published a volume of
comment upon the _Characteristics_ of Shaftesbury. His book is too
evidently modelled upon Montesquieu, whom he mentions with reverence, to
make us doubt its derivation. There is the same reliance upon Livy and
Machiavelli, the same attempt at striking generalization; though the
argument upon which Brown's conclusions are based is seldom given,
perhaps because his geometric clarity of statement impressed him as
self-demonstrative. Brown's volumes are an essay upon the depravity of
the times. He does not deny it humanitarianism, and a still lingering
sense of freedom, but it is steeped in corruption and displays nothing
so much as a luxurious and selfish effeminacy. He condemns the
universities out of hand, in phrases which Gibbon and Adam Smith would
not have rejected. He deplores the decay of taste and learning. Men
trifle with Hume's gay impieties, and could not, if they would,
appreciate the great works of Bishop Warburton. Politics has become
nothing save a means of promoting selfish interests. The church, the
theatre, and the arts have all of them lost their former virtues. The
neurotic temper of the times is known to all. The nation, as was shown
in 1745, when a handful of Highlanders penetrated without opposition to
the heart of the kingdom, has grown slack and cowardly. Gambling
penetrates every nook and cranny of the upper class; the officers of the
army devote themselves to fashion; the navy's main desire is for prize
money. Even the domestic affections are at a low ebb; and the grand tour
brings back a new species of Italianate Englishman. The poor, indeed,
the middle class, and the legal and medical professions, Brown
specifically exempts from this indictment. But he emphasizes his belief
that this is unimportant. "The manners and principles of those who
lead," he says, "... not of those who are governed ... will ever
determine the strength or weakness, and therefore the continuance or
dissolution of a state."