of them find among a people so disposed the necessary instruments to
execute his great designs; or, rather, what obstruction will he not find
from the continual opposition of private interest to public? But if, on
the contrary, a court inclines to tyranny, what a facility will be given
by these dispositions to that evil purpose? How will men with minds
relaxed by the enervating ease and softness of luxury have vigour to
oppose it? Will not most of them lean to servitude, as their natural
state, as that in which the extravagant and insatiable cravings of their
artificial wants may best be gratified at the charge of a bountiful
master or by the spoils of an enslaved and ruined people? When all sense
of public virtue is thus destroyed, will not fraud, corruption, and
avarice, or the opposite workings of court factions to bring disgrace on
each other, ruin armies and fleets without the help of an enemy, and give
up the independence of the nation to foreigners, after having betrayed
its liberties to a king? All these mischiefs you saw attendant on that
luxury, which some modern philosophers account (as I am informed) the
highest good to a state! Time will show that their doctrines are
pernicious to society, pernicious to government; and that yours, tempered
and moderated so as to render them more practicable in the present
circumstances of your country, are wise, salutary, and deserving of the
general thanks of mankind. But lest you should think, from the praise I
have given you, that flattery can find a place in Elysium, allow me to
lament, with the tender sorrow of a friend, that a man so superior to all
other follies could give into the reveries of a Madame Guyon, a
distracted enthusiast. How strange was it to see the two great lights of
France, you and the Bishop of Meaux, engaged in a controversy whether a
madwoman was a heretic or a saint!

_Fenelon_.--I confess my own weakness, and the ridiculousness of the
dispute; but did not your warm imagination carry you also into some