commodities from tabernacles, joint-stools, cart-sheds, or written sermons, pamphlets, or exhortations. So were the new theories of politics, which originated in misemployed genius, bandied about among speakers and writers of no genius; and as a transmogrified coal-heaver, or a vender of quack medicines, might retail from his chapel the doctrines of Whitfield, and bring in, as a proof of providence, a pair of breeches instead of a leg of mutton[6]; so a blacksmith could leave his anvil for his political pulpit, and vend the quack medicines of Tom Paine. But though revolutionary politics diffused themselves over great numbers of the ignorant votaries of literature, they extended to many others of a very contrary description, and efforts of talents and erudition were wasted in supporting extravagant paradoxes, pernicious principles, and wild theories, that could have informed and instructed mankind by valuable reasonings and inculcations; and our hero had occasion to see the effect of the Turgot theory of the perfectibility of man fully exemplified. The English champion of this doctrine was St. Leon, a writer of very considerable ingenuity, who, with the œconomique philosophy of the French school, undertook to join some of the metaphysical tenets of David Hume, as they were interpreted by St. Leon himself, especially his opinions on the foundations of morality; and whereas Mr. Hume has asserted, that the qualities and actions which the mind approves as virtuous, are those which are found either agreeable or useful to society, St. Leon asserted, that in every individual action the merit depends on its being performed by the agent, with a view to the aggregate benefit of all sentient beings, or, as he phrases it, what is best upon the whole. On this best upon the whole, together with the perfectibility of man, he constituted a very singular system that he delivered to the world, in a book which made a very extensive impression on minds predisposed for boundless innovation. Our hero was at great pains to make himself master of a production in which the establishment of the most extravagant nonsense was the end, for compassing which, acuteness and ingenuity were the means, and he was at a loss whether most to wonder at the folly of the propositions which were to be demonstrated, or the skill and ability of the intermediations; and he could not help thinking that St. Leon richly deserved to rank with the ancient Pyrrho, with the modern Hobbes, Spinosa, Mandeville, or any others who misemployed brilliant talents, in framing absurd or mischievous hypotheses. Powers which a refined state of society only could have produced, were by St. Leon exerted in recommending the rudest barbarity and incivilization. Metaphysical acuteness, and concatenated argumentation, were exercised in controverting truths, which the grossest stupidity can perceive to be undeniable, while profound wisdom regards them as the foundation of society.