hands of unfortunate people, who had once been, like their victors,
free, rich, and possessed of every benefit society can confer; until
they became subject to the cruel right of war, and to lawless force.
Is there then no superintending power who conducts the moral
operations of the world, as well as the physical? The same sublime
hand which guides the planets round the sun with so much exactness,
which preserves the arrangement of the whole with such exalted
wisdom and paternal care, and prevents the vast system from falling
into confusion; doth it abandon mankind to all the errors, the
follies, and the miseries, which their most frantic rage, and their
most dangerous vices and passions can produce?

The history of the earth! doth it present anything but crimes of the
most heinous nature, committed from one end of the world to the
other? We observe avarice, rapine, and murder, equally prevailing in
all parts. History perpetually tells us of millions of people
abandoned to the caprice of the maddest princes, and of whole
nations devoted to the blind fury of tyrants. Countries destroyed;
nations alternately buried in ruins by other nations; some parts of
the world beautifully cultivated, returned again to the pristine
state; the fruits of ages of industry, the toil of thousands in a
short time destroyed by a few! If one corner breathes in peace for a
few years, it is, in turn subjected, torn, and levelled; one would
almost believe the principles of action in man, considered as the
first agent of this planet, to be poisoned in their most essential
parts. We certainly are not that class of beings which we vainly
think ourselves to be; man an animal of prey, seems to have rapine
and the love of bloodshed implanted in his heart; nay, to hold it
the most honourable occupation in society: we never speak of a hero
of mathematics, a hero of knowledge of humanity; no, this