impute them to inherent defects in the moral
constitution of men: that oppression and tyranny grow up by a sort of
natural necessity, and that they will perish only when the human species
is extinct. Ludloe laboured to prove that this was, by no means, the
case: that man is the creature of circumstances: that he is capable
of endless improvement: that his progress has been stopped by the
artificial impediment of government: that by the removal of this, the
fondest dreams of imagination will be realized.

From detailing and accounting for the evils which exist under our
present institutions, he usually proceeded to delineate some scheme of
Utopian felicity, where the empire of reason should supplant that of
force: where justice should be universally understood and practised;
where the interest of the whole and of the individual should be seen
by all to be the same; where the public good should be the scope of all
activity; where the tasks of all should be the same, and the means of
subsistence equally distributed.

No one could contemplate his pictures without rapture. By their
comprehensiveness and amplitude they filled the imagination. I was
unwilling to believe that in no region of the world, or at no period
could these ideas be realized. It was plain that the nations of Europe
were tending to greater depravity, and would be the prey of perpetual
vicissitude. All individual attempts at their reformation would be
fruitless. He therefore who desired the diffusion of right principles,
to make a just system be adopted by a whole community, must pursue some
extraordinary method.

In this state of mind I recollected my native country, where a few
colonists from Britain had sown the germe of populous and mighty
empires. Attended, as they were, into their new abode, by all their
prejudices, yet such had been the influence of new circumstances,
of consulting for their own happiness, of adopting simple forms of
government, and excluding nobles and kings from their system, that they
enjoyed a degree of happiness far superior to their parent state.

To conquer the prejudices and change the habits of millions, are
impossible. The human mind, exposed to social influences, inflexibly
adheres to the direction that is given to it; but for the same reason
why men, who begin in error will continue, those who commence in truth,
may be expected to persist. Habit and example will operate with equal
force in both instances.

Let a fe