inadequate to secure those objects.--But, question what is to be
understood by order and subordination.--Increased knowledge and sense
in the people certainly not favorable to a credulous confidence and a
passive, unconditional submission, on their part, toward the presiding
classes in the community.--Advantage, to a wise and upright government,
of having intelligent subjects.--Great effect which a general
improvement among the people would necessarily have on the manner of
their being governed.--The people arrived, in this age, at a state
which renders it impracticable to preserve national tranquillity
without improving their minds and making some concession to their
claims.--Folly and probable calamity of an obstinate resolution to
maintain subordination in the nations of Europe in the arbitrary and
despotic manner of former times.--Facility and certain success of a
better system.


Section V.

Extreme poverty of religious knowledge among the uneducated people:
their notions respecting God, Providence, Jesus Christ, the invisible
world.--Fatal effect of their want of mental discipline as causing an
inaptitude to receive religious information.--Exemplifications,--in a
supposed experiment of religious instruction in a friendly visit to a
numerous uneducated family; in the stupidity and thoughtlessness often
betrayed in attendance on public religious services; in the
impossibility of imparting religious truths, with any degree of
clearness, to ignorant persons, when alarmed into some serious concern
by sickness; in the insensibility and invincible delusion sometimes
retained in the near approach to death.--Rare instances of the
admirable efficacy of religion to animate and enlarge the faculties,