e running in a
circle, without modesty, and without end, and making one error and
extravagance an excuse for the other. My sentiments about these arts and
their cause, I have often discoursed with my friends at large. Pope has
expressed them in good verse, where he talks with so much force of
reason and elegance of language, in praise of the state of nature:

"Then was not pride, nor arts that pride to aid,
Man walked with beast, joint tenant of the shade."

On the whole, my lord, if political society, in whatever form, has still
made the many the property of the few; if it has introduced labors
unnecessary, vices and diseases unknown, and pleasures incompatible
with nature; if in all countries it abridges the lives of millions, and
renders those of millions more utterly abject and miserable, shall we
still worship so destructive an idol, and daily sacrifice to it our
health, our liberty, and our peace? Or shall we pass by this monstrous
heap of absurd notions, and abominable practices, thinking we have
sufficiently discharged our duty in exposing the trifling, cheats, and
ridiculous juggles of a few mad, designing, or ambitious priests? Alas!
my lord, we labor under a mortal consumption, whilst we are so anxious
about the cure of a sore finger. For has not this leviathan of civil
power overflowed the earth with a deluge of blood, as if he were made to
disport and play therein? We have shown that political society, on a
moderate calculation, has been the means of murdering several times the
number of inhabitants now upon the earth, during its short existence,
not upwards of four thousand years in any accounts to be depended on.
But we have said nothing of the other, and perhaps as bad, consequence
of these wars, which have spilled such seas of blood, and reduced so
many millions to a merciless slavery. But these are only the ceremonies
performed in the porch of the political temple. Much more horrid ones
are seen as you enter it. The several species of government vie with
each other in the absurdity of their constitutions, and the oppression
which they make their subjects endure. Take them under what form you
please, they are in effect but a despotism, and they fall, both in
effect and appearance too, after a very short period, into that cruel
and detestable species of tyranny: which I rather call it, because we
have been educated under another form, than that this is of worse
consequences to mankind. For the