We are then under a great illusion, if we hope to be able to found morality on the connection of private interest with that of the public; and if we imagine, that the empire of social laws can be separated from the support of religion. The authority of these laws has nothing decisive for those who have not assisted to establish them; and were we to give to the hereditary distinctions of property an origin the most remote, it is no less true, on this account that the poor succeeding inhabitants of the earth, struck with the unequal division of its rich domains, and not perceiving the limits and lines of separation traced by nature, would have some right to say; these compacts, these partitions, this diversity of lots, which procures to some abundance and repose; to others, poverty and labour; all this legislation, in short, is only advantageous to a small number of privileged men; and we will not subscribe to it, unless compelled by the fear of personal danger. What are then, they would add, these ideas of right and wrong, with which we are entertained? What are these dissertations on the necessity of adopting some order in society, and of observing rules? Our mind bends not to those principles, which, general in theory, become particular in practice. We find some satisfaction and compensation, when the idea of virtue, of submission, and of sacrifice, are united to religious sentiments; when we believe we shall render an account of our actions to a Supreme Being, whose laws and will we adore, and from whom we have received every thing, and whose approbation presents itself to our eyes, as a motive of emulation, and an object of recompense: but if the contracted bounds of life limit the narrow circle in which all our interest ought to confine itself, where all our speculations and our hopes terminate, what respect owe we then to those whom nature has formed our equals? To those men sprung from lifeless clay, to return to it again with us, and to be lost for ever in the same dust? They have only invented these laws of justice, to be more tranquil usurpers. Let them descend from their exalted rank, that they may be put on our level, or, at least, present us with a partition less unequal, and we shall then be able to conceive, that the observance of the laws of right is of importance to us; till then, we shall have just motives for being the enemies of civil order, which we find so disadvantageous; and we do not comprehend how, in the midst of so many gratifications which excite our envy, it is, in the name of our own interest, that we ought to renounce them. Such is the secret language which men, overwhelmed with the distress of their situation, would not fail to use; or those who, merely in a state of habitual inferiority, found themselves continually hurt by the splendid sight of luxury and magnificence.