It would be, at present, a hardy enterprize, to attempt to conduct men by reason alone, since the first thing that reason discovers is its own weakness; but when we want to rest on maxims which admit of controversy; when we wish to oppose to the strong motive of personal interest, a moral consideration which cannot act but with the concurrence of profound reflection; we recollect the doctrine of the first œconomists, who, in establishing the extravagant principles respecting an exclusive right of exporting or monopolizing grain, put off the care of preventing popular commotions till they should happen. It appears to me, that false reasoning, on the union of private with public interest, arises from applying to the present state of society, the principles which have served as the base for their formation; this very natural confusion is one grand source of error. Let us try to render clear a proposition, which, at first, appears difficult to comprehend; and in this light we will suppose, for a moment the future generation assembled in idea, in an imaginary world, and ignorant before they inhabit the earth, who those individuals are that shall be born of parents loaded with the gifts of fortune, and those who are beset with misery from their cradle. They are instructed in the principles of civil rights, and the convenience of the laws of order, has been represented to them, and a sketch is drawn of the disorder, which would be the inevitable consequence of a continual variation in the division of property; then all those who are to compose the new generation, equally uncertain of the lot that the chance of birth reserves for them, subscribe unanimously to those events which await them; and at the very moment in which the relations of society exist only in speculation, it might be truly said, that the personal interest is lost in the public; but this identity ceases, when each, arrived on the earth, has taken possession of his lot; it is then no longer possible, that the various personal interests should concur to the maintenance of these prodigious gradations of rank and fortune, which are derived from the chance of birth; and those to whom cares and wants have fallen, will not be resigned to the inferiority of their condition, but by a grand religious principle alone, which can make them perceive an eternal justice, and place them in imagination before time, and before the laws. There is nothing so easy, as the establishment of conventions, and making rules to be observed, till the moment of the drawing of a lottery; every one then, at the same point of view, finds all good, all just, and well contrived, and peace reigns by common agreement; but as soon as the blanks and prizes are known, the mind changes, the temper grows sour; and without the check of authority, it would become unmanageable, envious, quarrelsome, and sometimes unjust and violent.