of their kingdoms. You can
judge yourself whether the likeness delineated is correct. You are in
a position to discover their intrigues, their underplots, their
conduct, and their discourse, and you will always find that their
constant object is to flatter princes for the purpose of governing
them and keeping nations in slavery.

It is to please citizens so dangerous that sovereigns mingle in
theological questions, take the part of those who succeed in seducing
them, persecute all those who do not submit, proscribe with fury the
friends of reason, and by repressing knowledge injure their own power.
Because the priests, who urge princes to sacrilege when they combat
for them, are indignant against the same princes when they refuse to
destroy the enemies of their own particular clerical body. They
likewise denounce sovereigns as impious if the latter treat
theological disputes with the indifference they merit.

When hereafter, reclaimed from their prejudices, princes wish to
govern for the good of all, let them cease to hear the interested and
often sanguinary councils of these pretended divine men, who,
regarding themselves as the centre of all things, wish to have
sacrificed for this object the happiness, the repose, the riches, and
the honors of the state. Let the sovereign never enter into their
dissensions, let him never persecute for religious opinions, which,
among sectaries, are commonly on both sides equally ridiculous and
destitute of foundation. They would never involve the government if
the sovereign had not the weakness to mingle in them. Let him give
unlimited freedom to the course of thinking, while he directs by just
laws the course of acting on the part of his subjects. Let him permit
every one to dream or speculate as he pleases, provided he conducts
himself otherwise as an honest man and a good citizen. At least let
the prince not oppose the progress of knowledge, which alone is
capable of extricating his people from ignorance, barbarity, and
superstition, which have made victims of so many Christian rulers. Let
him be assured that enlightened and instructed citizens are more
law-abiding, industrious, and peaceable than stupid slaves without
knowledge and without reason, who will always be ready to take all the
passions with which a fanatic wishes to inspire them.

Let the sovereign especially occupy himself with the education of his
subjects, nor leave the clergy unobstructedly to impregnate his
pe