Lord C----d.---- Your lordship may believe that I could have no great pleasure in seeing a woman's follies: I was only desirous of inquiring what they are doing at home, or in America? Did I desire to punish an enemy in the severest manner, I would inflict nothing worse upon him than to oblige him to listen to all the follies in which he has no share, and to be witness to gaieties in which he cannot partake. My heart was never dilated by the amplitude of generous principles; nothing was ever interesting to me, but in proportion as it contributed to my _own_ particular _gratifications_. Curiosity now however prevailed with me to attempt going to discover in what way they are going on, being apprehensive of the consequences of the measures formerly adopted. Whoever would deprive men of their natural rights, is an enemy to the race of men; and he that thinks it can be effectuated without universal mischief, is a stranger to the ways of Providence; the most invariable rule of which is, That nothing contradictory to its original laws shall ever be accomplished, either of a physical or moral nature, without bringing ruin on that people which has instituted it. How few are capable of distinguishing the good and pernicious effects which will follow the instituting a new law, before it is enacted! To remedy present evils, they make a law which brings greater mischiefs along with it, though imperceptible to their shallow capacities. No two understandings on earth are more different than a judicial and legislative; many men enjoy the first, who have not the least emanation of the second. When a law is to be founded, which depends on the first principles in human nature, there genius only can effectuate any discovery of truth; the mind must dart forward into futurity, from the principles which it knows in human nature: a genius of quite a different kind from that of distinguishing between right and wrong in any particular case. The first only can form the legislator, and plan laws of utility and public good, the latter decide of the consequences of them when they are made. The one capacity is the most rare, most excellent and beneficial blessing bestowed on man; the other to be found in almost all mankind, or attainable by habit, yet useful when confined to its proper sphere of action, and not permitted to rove, with the imagination of the superior _few_, amongst the regions of exalted genius.