racting, and dissipating rays, and how far their foulness will
account for this change; the remark itself is common and true: no less
true, and equally surprising from him, is that which immediately
precedes it: "It is in vain to endeavor to check the progress of
irreligion and licentiousness, by punishing such crimes in _one
individual_, if others equally culpable are rewarded with the honors and
emoluments of the state."[100] I am not in the secret of the author's
manner of writing; but it appears to me, that he must intend these
reflections as a satire upon the administration of his happy years. Were
over the honors and emoluments of the state more lavishly squandered
upon persons scandalous in their lives than during that period? In these
scandalous lives, was there anything more scandalous than the mode of
punishing _one culpable individual_? In that individual, is anything
more culpable than his having been seduced by the example of some of
those very persons by whom he was thus persecuted?

The author is so eager to attack others, that he provides but
indifferently for his own defence. I believe, without going beyond the
page I have now before me, he is very sensible, that I have sufficient
matter of further, and, if possible, of heavier charge against his
friends, upon his own principle. But it is because the advantage is too
great, that I decline making use of it. I wish the author had not
thought that all methods are lawful in party. Above all he ought to have
taken care not to wound his enemies through the sides of his country.
This he has done, by making that monstrous and overcharged picture of
the distresses of our situation. No wonder that he, who finds this
country in the same condition with that of France at the time of Henry
the Fourth, could also find a resemblance between his political friend
and the Duke of Sully. As to those personal resemblances, people will
often judge of them from their affections: they may imagine in these
clouds whatsoever figures they please; but what is the conformation of
that eye which can discover a resemblance of this country and these
times to those with which the author compares them? France, a country
just recovered out of twenty-five years of the most cruel and desolating
civil war that perhaps was ever known. The kingdom, under the veil of
momentary quiet, full of the most atrocious political, operating upon
the most furious fanatical factions. Some pretenders even t