and the legislator.

Picture to yourself a collection of the various faces and
figures of every country and nation, exhibiting accurately,
color, features and form; what a field for investigation and
enquiry as to the influence of climate, customs, food, etc.
It might truly be called the science of man! Buffon has
attempted a chapter of this nature, but it only serves to
exhibit more strikingly our actual ignorance. Such a
collection is said to have been begun at St. Petersburg, but
it is also said at the same time to be as imperfect as the
vocabulary of the three hundred languages. The enterprise
would be worthy of the French nation.

At the sight of so many rational beings, considering on the one hand the
immensity of thoughts and sensations assembled in this place, and on the
other hand, reflecting on the opposition of so many opinions, and the
shock of so many passions of men so capricious, I struggled between
astonishment, admiration, and secret dread--when the legislator
commanded silence, and attracted all my attention.

Inhabitants of earth! a free and powerful nation addresses you with
words of justice and peace, and she offers you the sure pledges of her
intentions in her own conviction and experience. Long afflicted with the
same evils as yourselves, we sought for their source, and found them
all derived from violence and injustice, erected into law by the
inexperience of past ages, and maintained by the prejudices of the
present. Then abolishing our artificial and arbitrary institutions,
and recurring to the origin of all right and reason, we have found
that there existed in the very order of nature and in the physical
constitution of man, eternal and immutable laws, which only waited his
observance to render him happy.

O men! cast your eyes on the heavens that give you light, and on the
earth that gives you bread! Since they offer the same bounties to you
all--since from the power that gives them motion you have all received
the same life, the same organs, have you not likewise all received the
same right to enjoy its benefits? Has it not hereby declared you all
equal and free? What mortal shall dare refuse to his fellow that which
nature gives him?

O nations! let us banish all tyranny and all discord; let us form but
one society, one great family; and, since human nature has but one
constitution, let there exist in future but one law, that of