their moral hero constantly to exhaust the stores of his powerful
rhetoric in the expression of universal benevolence, whilst his heart
was incapable of harboring one spark of common parental affection.
Benevolence to the whole species, and want of feeling for every
individual with whom the professors come in contact, form the character
of the new philosophy. Setting up for an unsocial independence, this
their hero of vanity refuses the just price of common labor, as well as
the tribute which opulence owes to genius, and which, when paid, honors
the giver and the receiver; and then he pleads his beggary as an excuse
for his crimes. He melts with tenderness for those only who touch him by
the remotest relation, and then, without one natural pang, casts away,
as a sort of offal and excrement, the spawn of his disgustful amours,
and sends his children to the hospital of foundlings. The bear loves,
licks, and forms her young: but bears are not philosophers. Vanity,
however, finds its account in reversing the train of our natural
feelings. Thousands admire the sentimental-writer; the affectionate
father is hardly known in his parish.

Under this philosophic instructor in _the ethics of vanity_, they have
attempted in France a regeneration of the moral constitution of man.
Statesmen like your present rulers exist by everything which is
spurious, fictitious, and false,--by everything which takes the man from
his house, and sets him on a stage,--which makes him up an artificial
creature, with painted, theatric sentiments, fit to be seen by the glare
of candle-light, and formed to be contemplated at a due distance. Vanity
is too apt to prevail in all of us, and in all countries. To the
improvement of Frenchmen, it seems not absolutely necessary that it
should be taught upon system. But it is plain that the present rebellion
was its legitimate offspring, and it is piously fed by that rebellion
with a daily dole.