, in
reading these moral lectures, which lessens our hatred to criminals and
our pity to sufferers by insinuating that it has been owing to their
fault or folly that the latter have become the prey of the former. By
flattering us that we are not subject to the same vices and follies, it
induces a confidence that we shall not suffer the same evils by a
contact with the infamous gang of robbers who have thus robbed and
butchered our neighbors before our faces. We must not be flattered to
our ruin. Our vices are the same as theirs, neither more nor less. If
any faults we had, which wanted this French example to call us to a
"_softening_ of character, and a review of our social relations and
duties," there is yet no sign that we have commenced our reformation. We
seem, by the best accounts I have from the world, to go on just as
formerly, "some to undo, and some to be undone." There is no change at
all: and if we are not bettered by the sufferings of war, this peace,
which, for reasons to himself best known, the author fixes as the period
of our reformation, must have something very extraordinary in it;
because hitherto ease, opulence, and their concomitant pleasure have
never greatly disposed mankind to that serious reflection and review
which the author supposes to be the result of the approaching peace with
vice and crime. I believe he forms a right estimate of the nature of
this peace, and that it will want many of those circumstances which
formerly characterizes that state of things.

If I am right in my ideas of this new republic, the different states of
peace and war will make no difference in her pursuits. It is not an
enemy of accident that we have to deal with. Enmity to us, and to all
civilized nations, is wrought into the very stamina of its Constitution.
It was made to pursue the purposes of that fundamental enmity. The
design will go on regularly in every position and in every relation.
Their hostility is to break us to their dominion; their amity is to
debauch us to their principles. In the former, we are to contend with
their force; in the latter, with their intrigues. But we stand in a very
different posture of defence in the two situations. In war, so long as
government is supported, we fight with the whole united force of the
kingdom. When under the name of peace the war of intrigue begins, we do
not contend against our enemies with the whole force of the kingdom.
No,--we shall have to fight, (if it shoul