ntrary, I have seen many that have yielded to the manly resistance of
those who suffered by them.

To describe the consequences of abuses, is the most efficient way of
destroying the abuses themselves. And this is true particularly in
regard to abuses which, like the protective system, while inflicting
real evil upon the masses, are to those who seem to profit by them only
an illusion and a deception.

Well, then, does this species of morality realize all the social
perfection which the sympathetic nature of the human heart and its
noblest faculties cause us to hope for? This I by no means pretend.
Admit the general diffusion of this defensive morality--which, after
all, is only a knowledge that the best understood interests are in
accord with general utility and justice. A society, although very well
regulated, might not be very attractive, where there were no knaves,
only because there were no fools; where vice, always latent, and, so to
speak, overcome by famine, would only stand in need of available plunder
in order to be restored to vigor; where the prudence of the individual
would be guarded by the vigilance of the mass, and, finally, where
reforms, regulating external acts, would not have penetrated to the
consciences of men. Such a state of society we sometimes see typified in
one of those exact, rigorous and just men who is ever ready to resent
the slightest infringement of his rights, and shrewd in avoiding
impositions. You esteem him--possibly you admire him. You may make him
your deputy, but you would not necessarily choose him for a friend.

Let, then, the two moral systems, instead of criminating each other, act
in concert, and attack vice at its opposite poles. While the economists
perform their task in uprooting prejudice, stimulating just and
necessary opposition, studying and exposing the real nature of actions
and things, let the religious moralist, on his part, perform his more
attractive, but more difficult, labor; let him attack the very body of
iniquity, follow it to its most vital parts, paint the charms of
beneficence, self-denial and devotion, open the fountains of virtue
where we can only choke the sources of vice--this is his duty. It is
noble and beautiful. But why does he dispute the utility of that which
belongs to us?

In a society which, though not superlatively virtuous, should
nevertheless be regulated by the influences of _economical morality_
(which is the knowledge of the econom