of legislation; and that, distrustful, calculating, selfish in private,
there are thousands who would, with a credulous fanaticism, fling
themselves as victims before that unrecompensing Moloch which they term
the Public.

Living, then, much by myself, but reflecting much upon the world, I
learned to love mankind. Philanthropy brought ambition; for I was
ambitious, not for my own aggrandisement, but for the service of others--
for the poor--the toiling--the degraded; these constituted that part of
my fellow-beings which I the most loved, for these were bound to me by
the most engaging of all human ties--misfortune! I began to enter into
the intrigues of the state; I extended my observation and inquiry from
individuals to nations; I examined into the mysteries of the science
which has arisen in these later days to give the lie to the wisdom of the
past, to reduce into the simplicity of problems the intricacies of
political knowledge, to teach us the fallacy of the system which had
governed by restriction, and imagined that the happiness of nations
depended upon the perpetual interference of its rulers, and to prove
to us that the only unerring policy of art is to leave a free and
unobstructed progress to the hidden energies and province of Nature.
But it was not only the theoretical investigation of the state which
employed me. I mixed, though in secret, with the agents of its springs.
While I seemed only intent upon pleasure, I locked in my heart the
consciousness and vanity of power. In the levity of the lip I disguised
the workings and the knowledge of the brain; and I looked, as with a
gifted eye, upon the mysteries of the hidden depths, while I seemed to
float an idler, with the herd, only on the surface of the stream.

Why was I disgusted, when I had but to put forth my hand and grasp
whatever object my ambition might desire? Alas! there was in my heart