s, may wander
and may rest. Your system, or rather your arrangement of one already
established, pleases me. Ministers would only lose thereby that
portion of their possessions which they give away to needy relatives,
unworthy dependants, or the requisite supporters of their authority
and power.

_Malesherbes._ On this plan, no such supporters would be necessary, no
such dependants could exist, and no such relatives could be
disappointed. Beside, the conflicts of their opponents must be
periodical, weak, and irregular.

_Rousseau._ The craving for the rich carrion would be less keen; the
zeal of opposition, as usual, would be measured by the stomach,
whereon hope and overlooking have always a strong influence.

_Malesherbes._ My excellent friend, do not be offended with me for an
ingenuous and frank confession: promise me your pardon.

_Rousseau._ You need none.

_Malesherbes._ Promise it, nevertheless.

_Rousseau._ You have said nothing, done nothing, which could in any
way displease me.

_Malesherbes._ You grant me, then, a bill of indemnity for what I may
have undertaken with a good intention since we have been together?

_Rousseau._ Willingly.

_Malesherbes._ I fell into your views, I walked along with you side by
side, merely to occupy your mind, which I perceived was agitated.

In compliance with your humour, to engage your fancy, to divert it
awhile from Switzerland, by which you appear and partly on my account
to be offended, I began with reflections upon England: I raised up
another cloud in the region of them, light enough to be fantastic and
diaphanous, and to catch some little irradiation from its western
sun. Do not run after it farther; it has vanished already. Consider:
the three great nations----

_Rousseau._ Pray, which are those?

_Malesherbes._ I cannot in conscience give the palm to the Hottentots,
the Greenlanders, or the Hurons: I meant to designate those who united
to empire the most social virtue and civil freedom. Athens, Rome, and
England have received on the subject of government elaborate treatises
from their greatest men. You have reasoned more dispassionately and
profoundly on it than Plato has done, or probably than Cicero, led
away as he often is by the authority of those who are inferior to
himself: but do you excel Aristoteles in calm and patient
investigation? Or, think you, are your reading and range of thought
more extensive than Harrington's and Milton's? Yet what eff