146 STUDIES OF NATURE. 



courage, one day, to undertake to render the Na- 

 tion internally happy, and powerful abroad, I can 

 venture to predict, that this will be effected neither 

 by plans of economy, nor by political alliances, 

 but by reforming it's manners, and it's plan of 

 education. He never will make good this revo- 

 lution, by means of punifliments and rewards, but 

 by imitating the procefl'es of Nature, who always 

 carries her point by re-a6lion. It is not to the 

 apparent evil that the remedy muft be applied, 

 but to it's caufe. The caufe of the moral power 

 of gold, is in the venality of public offices; 

 that of the exceffive fuperabundance of indolent 

 tradefmen in our cities, is in the impofts which 

 degrade the inhabitants of the country ; that of 

 the beggary of the poor, is in the overgrown pro- 

 perty of the rich ; that of the proflitution of 

 young women, is in the celibacy of the men ; that 

 of the prejudices of the Nobility, in the refent- 

 ments of the vulgar ; and that of all the evils of 

 fociety, in the torments inflided on children. 



For my own part, I have fpoken out ; and if I 

 could have fpoken to the Nation in one vaft af- 

 fembly, from fome point of the Horizon where 

 Paris is difcernible, 1 would have pointed out to 

 my Country, on the one part, the monuments of 

 the rich ; the thoufands of voluptuous palaces in 

 the. fuburbs, eleven theatres, the ileeples of a 



hundred 



