them to the fate
of the sonnet of the misanthrope. At the head of the whole was to have
been the life of the author. For this I had collected some good
materials, and which I flattered myself I should not spoil in making use
of them. I had been a little acquainted with the Abbe de St. Pierre, in
his old age, and the veneration I had for his memory warranted to me,
upon the whole, that the comte would not be dissatisfied with the manner
in which I should have treated his relation.

I made my first essay on the 'Perpetual Peace', the greatest and most
elaborate of all the works which composed the collection; and before I
abandoned myself to my reflections I had the courage to read everything
the abbe had written upon this fine subject, without once suffering
myself to be disgusted either by his slowness or his repetitions. The
public has seen the extract, on which account I have nothing to say upon
the subject. My opinion of it has not been printed, nor do I know that
it ever will be; however, it was written at the same time the extract was
made. From this I passed to the 'Polysynodie', or Plurality of Councils,
a work written under the regent to favor the administration he had
chosen, and which caused the Abbe de Saint Pierre to be expelled from the
academy, on account of some remarks unfavorable to the preceding
administration, and with which the Duchess of Maine and the Cardinal de
Polignac were displeased. I completed this work as I did the former,
with an extract and remarks; but I stopped here without intending to
continue the undertaking which I ought never to have begun.

The reflection which induced me to give it up naturally presents itself,
and it was astonishing I had not made it sooner.

Most of the writings of the Abbe de Saint Pierre were either
observations, or contained observations, on some parts of the government
of France, and several of these were of so free a nature, that it was
happy for him he had made them with impunity. But in the offices of all
the ministers of state the Abbe de St. Pierre had ever been considered as
a kind of preacher rather than a real politician, and he was suffered to
say what he pleased, because it appeared that nobody listened to him.
Had I procured him readers the case would have been different. He was a
Frenchman, and I was not one; and by repeating his censures, although in
his own name, I exposed myself to be asked, rather rudely, but without
injustice, what