the just price of common labor, as well as
the tribute which opulence owes to genius, and which, when paid, honors
the giver and the receiver; and then he pleads his beggary as an excuse
for his crimes. He melts with tenderness for those only who touch him by
the remotest relation, and then, without one natural pang, casts away,
as a sort of offal and excrement, the spawn of his disgustful amours,
and sends his children to the hospital of foundlings. The bear loves,
licks, and forms her young: but bears are not philosophers. Vanity,
however, finds its account in reversing the train of our natural
feelings. Thousands admire the sentimental-writer; the affectionate
father is hardly known in his parish.

Under this philosophic instructor in _the ethics of vanity_, they have
attempted in France a regeneration of the moral constitution of man.
Statesmen like your present rulers exist by everything which is
spurious, fictitious, and false,--by everything which takes the man from
his house, and sets him on a stage,--which makes him up an artificial
creature, with painted, theatric sentiments, fit to be seen by the glare
of candle-light, and formed to be contemplated at a due distance. Vanity
is too apt to prevail in all of us, and in all countries. To the
improvement of Frenchmen, it seems not absolutely necessary that it
should be taught upon system. But it is plain that the present rebellion
was its legitimate offspring, and it is piously fed by that rebellion
with a daily dole.

If the system of institution recommended by the Assembly is false and
theatric, it is because their system of government is of the same
character. To that, and to that alone, it is strictly conformable. To
understand either, we must connect the morals with the politics of the
legislators. Your practical philosophers, systematic in everything, have
wisely began at the source. As the relation between parents and children
is the first among the elements of vulgar, natural morality,[4] they
erect statues to a wild, ferocious, low-minded, hard-hearted father, of
fine general feelings,--a lover of his kind, but a hater of his kindred.
Your masters reject the duties of this vulgar relation, as contrary to
liberty, as not founded in the social compact, and not binding according
to the rights of men; because the relation is not, of course, the result
of _free election_,--never so on the side of the children, not always on
the part of the parents.

The ne