a prolific energy, is with me the criterion of profound
wisdom. What your politicians think the marks of a bold, hardy genius
are only proofs of a deplorable want of ability. By their violent haste,
and their defiance of the process of Nature, they are delivered over
blindly to every projector and adventurer, to every alchemist and
empiric. They despair of turning to account anything that is common.
Diet is nothing in their system of remedy. The worst of it is, that this
their despair of curing common distempers by regular methods arises not
only from defect of comprehension, but, I fear, from some malignity of
disposition. Your legislators seem to have taken their opinions of all
professions, ranks, and offices from the declamations and buffooneries
of satirists,--who would themselves be astonished, if they were held to
the letter of their own descriptions. By listening only to these, your
leaders regard all things only on the side of their vices and faults,
and view those vices and faults under every color of exaggeration. It is
undoubtedly true, though it may seem paradoxical,--but, in general,
those who are habitually employed in finding and displaying faults are
unqualified for the work of reformation; because their minds are not
only unfurnished with patterns of the fair and good, but by habit they
come to take no delight in the contemplation of those things. By hating
vices too much, they come to love men too little. It is therefore not
wonderful that they should be indisposed and unable to serve them. From
hence arises the complexional disposition of some of your guides to pull
everything in pieces. At this malicious game they display the whole of
their _quadrimanous_ activity. As to the rest, the paradoxes of eloquent
writers, brought forth purely as a sport of fancy, to try their talents,
to rouse attention, and excite surprise, are taken up by these
gentlemen, not in the spirit of the original authors, as means of
cultivating their taste and improving their style: these paradoxes
become with them serious grounds of action, upon which they proceed in
regulating the most important concerns of the state. Cicero ludicrously
describes Cato as endeavoring to act in the commonwealth upon the school
paradoxes which exercised the wits of the junior students in the Stoic
philosophy. If this was true of Cato, these gentlemen copy after him in
the manner of some persons who lived about his time,--_pede nudo
Catonem_. Mr.