If the system of institution recommended by the Assembly is false and
theatric, it is because their system of government is of the same
character. To that, and to that alone, it is strictly conformable. To
understand either, we must connect the morals with the politics of the
legislators. Your practical philosophers, systematic in everything, have
wisely began at the source. As the relation between parents and children
is the first among the elements of vulgar, natural morality,[4] they
erect statues to a wild, ferocious, low-minded, hard-hearted father, of
fine general feelings,--a lover of his kind, but a hater of his kindred.
Your masters reject the duties of this vulgar relation, as contrary to
liberty, as not founded in the social compact, and not binding according
to the rights of men; because the relation is not, of course, the result
of _free election_,--never so on the side of the children, not always on
the part of the parents.

The next relation which they regenerate by their statues to Rousseau is
that which is next in sanctity to that of a father. They differ from
those old-fashioned thinkers who considered pedagogues as sober and
venerable characters, and allied to the parental. The moralists of the
dark times _præceptorem sancti voluere parentis esse loco_. In this age
of light they teach the people that preceptors ought to be in the place
of gallants. They systematically corrupt a very corruptible race, (for
some time a growing nuisance amongst you,)--a set of pert, petulant
literators, to whom, instead of their proper, but severe, unostentatious
duties, they assign the brilliant part of men of wit and pleasure, of
gay, young, military sparks, and danglers at toilets. They call on the
rising generation in France to take a sympathy in the adventures and
fortunes, and they endeavor to engage their sensibility on the side, of
pedagogues who betray the most awful family trusts and vitiate their