iminals and victims; and
those who have been most eager in imbibing or propagating them have, by a
natural and just retribution, been the first sacrificed. The new
discoveries in politics have produced some in ethics not less novel, and
until the adoption of revolutionary doctrines, the extent of human
submission or human depravity was fortunately unknown.

In this source of guilt and misery the people of La Vendee are now to be
instructed--that people, who are acknowledged to be hospitable, humane,
and laborious, and whose ideas of freedom may be better estimated by
their resistance to a despotism which the rest of France has sunk under,
than by the jargon of pretended reformers.--I could wish, that not only
the peasants of La Vendee, but those of all other countries, might for
ever remain strangers to such pernicious knowledge. It is sufficient for
this useful class of men to be taught the simple precepts of religion and
morality, and those who would teach them more, are not their benefactors.
Our age is, indeed, a literary age, and such pursuits are both liberal
and laudable in the rich and idle; but why should volumes of politics or
philosophy be mutilated and frittered into pamphlets, to inspire a
disgust for labour, and a taste for study or pleasure, in those to whom
such disgusts or inclinations are fatal. The spirit of one author is
extracted, and the beauties of another are selected, only to bewilder the
understanding, and engross the time, of those who might be more
profitably employed.

I know I may be censured as illiberal; but I have, during my abode in
this country, sufficiently witnessed the disastrous effects of corrupting
a people through their amusements or curiosity, and of making men neglect
their useful callings to become patriots and philosophers.*--

*This right of directing public affairs, and neglecting their own,
we may suppose essential to republicans of the lower orders, since
we find the following sentence of transportation in the registers of
a popular commission:

"Bergeron, a dealer in skins--suspected--having done nothing in
favour of the revolution--extremely selfish (egoiste,) and blaming
the Sans-Culottes for neglecting their callings, that they may
attend only to public concerns."--Signed by the members of the
Commission and the two Committees.

--_"Il est dangereux d'apprendre au peuple a raisonner: il ne faut pas
l'eclairer trop,