exact and regular relations to him, he will preserve his existence, and make it as happy as it can be." This code of "natural laws" is then described by Volney as possessing no fewer than _ten_ peculiar characteristics, which give it a decided preeminence over every other moral system, whether human or Divine,--as being _primitive, immediate, universal, invariable, evident, reasonable, just, peaceful, beneficial_, and alone _sufficient_. But it is so only when viewed in connection with the miserably low and meagre system of morals with which it is avowedly associated. For when morals are described as a mere physical science, founded on man's organization, his interests and passions,--when the treatise, according to its _second_ title, is professedly an attempt to expound the _physical principles of morals_,--and when, in pursuance of this plan, all the principles of Ethics are rigorously reduced to _one_, namely, the principle of self-preservation, which is enforced, as a duty, by the only sanctions of pleasure and pain,--it is not wonderful that, _for such an end_, the "natural laws" might be held sufficient: but it is wonderful that any mind capable of a moment's reflection should not have perceived that, in such a system, the cardinal idea of _Deity_ is altogether omitted, or left unaccounted for, in the case of Man, and that no attempt is made to explain or to account for anything that is properly _moral_ in the government of God. * * * * *