 of victory, fighting under the banners of truth? Alas!—Well well—
My own sensations, Oliver, are so acute, and I am so fearful lest they should lead me astray, that I could not forbear this detail—Let us change the theme.
Well, here we are, in France; and, wonderful to tell, France is not England!
I imagine it is impossible to travel

through a foreign country, without falling into certain reveries; and that each man will fashion his dreams in part from accident, and in part according to the manner in which he has been accustomed to ruminate. Thy most excellent father, Oliver, early turned my mind to the consideration of forms of government, and their effects upon the manners and morals of men. The subject, in his estimation, is the most noble that comes under our cognizance; and the more I think myself capable of examining, and the more I actually do examine, the more I am a convert to his opinion. How often has it been said of France, by various English philosophers, and by many of its own sages, What a happy country would this be, were it well governed!

But, with equal truth, the same may be said of every country under heaven; England itself, Oliver, in spite of our partialities, not excepted.
How false, how futile, how absurd is the remark that a despotic government, under a perfect monarch, would be the state of highest felicity! First an impossible thing is asked; and next impossible consequences deduced. One tyrant generates a nation of tyrants. His own mistakes communicate themselves east, west, north, and south; and what appeared to be but a spark becomes a conflagration.
How inconsistent are the demands and complaints of ignorance! It wishes to tyrannize, yet exclaims against tyranny! It grasps at wealth, and pants after

power; yet clamours aloud, against the powerful and the wealthy! It hourly starts out into all the insolence of pride; yet hates and endeavours to spurn at the proud!
Among the many who have a vague kind of suspicion that things might be better, are mingled a few, who seem very desirous they should remain as they are. These are the rich; who, having by extortion and rapine plundered the defenceless, and heaped up choice of viands and the fat of the land, some sufficient to feed ten, some twenty, some a hundred, some a thousand, and others whole armies, and being themselves each only able to eat for one, say to the hungry, who have no food—
Come! Dance
