heard, where only the accents of peace, alacrity, and gratitude
should resound. There the very delirium of tyranny tramples on the
best gifts of nature, and sports with the fate, the happiness, the
lives of millions: there the extreme fertility of the ground always
indicates the extreme misery of the inhabitants!

Everywhere one part of the human species are taught the art of
shedding the blood of the other; of setting fire to their dwellings;
of levelling the works of their industry: half of the existence of
nations regularly employed in destroying other nations.--"What
little political felicity is to be met with here and there, has cost
oceans of blood to purchase; as if good was never to be the portion
of unhappy man. Republics, kingdoms, monarchies, founded either on
fraud or successful violence, increase by pursuing the steps of the
same policy, until they are destroyed in their turn, either by the
influence of their own crimes, or by more successful but equally
criminal enemies."

If from this general review of human nature, we descend to the
examination of what is called civilised society; there the
combination of every natural and artificial want, makes us pay very
dear for what little share of political felicity we enjoy. It is a
strange heterogeneous assemblage of vices and virtues, and of a
variety of other principles, for ever at war, for ever jarring, for
ever producing some dangerous, some distressing extreme. Where do
you conceive then that nature intended we should be happy? Would you
prefer the state of men in the woods, to that of men in a more
improved situation? Evil preponderates in both; in the first they
often eat each other for want of food, and in the other they often
starve each other for want of room. For my part, I think the vices