Rousseau celebrates barbarism, and, apostrophizing the shade of
Fabricius, he forgets that, in conquering the world, the Romans
never dreamed of establishing their own liberty on a firm basis, or
of extending the reign of virtue. Eager to support his system, he
stigmatizes, as vicious, every effort of genius; and uttering the
apotheosis of savage virtues, he exalts those to demigods, who were
scarcely human--the brutal Spartans, who in defiance of justice and
gratitude, sacrificed, in cold blood, the slaves that had shown
themselves men to rescue their oppressors.

Disgusted with artificial manners and virtues, the citizen of
Geneva, instead of properly sifting the subject, threw away the
wheat with the chaff, without waiting to inquire whether the evils,
which his ardent soul turned from indignantly, were the consequence
of civilization, or the vestiges of barbarism. He saw vice
trampling on virtue, and the semblance of goodness taking place of
the reality; he saw talents bent by power to sinister purposes, and
never thought of tracing the gigantic mischief up to arbitrary
power, up to the hereditary distinctions that clash with the mental
superiority that naturally raises a man above his fellows. He did
not perceive, that the regal power, in a few generations,
introduces idiotism into the noble stem, and holds out baits to
render thousands idle and vicious.

Nothing can set the regal character in a more contemptible point of
view, than the various crimes that have elevated men to the supreme
dignity. Vile intrigues, unnatural crimes, and every vice that
degrades our nature, have been the steps to this distinguished
eminence; yet millions of men have supinely allowed the nerveless
limbs of the posterity of such rapacious prowlers, to rest quietly