This is the circumstance entirely overlooked, or artfully kept out of sight, in the boasted Illumination of these days. No attention is paid to the important changes which have happened in national greatness, in national connection, in national improvement--yet we never think of parting with any of the advantages, real or imaginary, which these changes have produced--nor do we reflect that in order to keep a great nation together--to make it act with equality, or with preponderancy, among other nations, the individual exertions must be concentrated, must be directed--and that this requires a ruler vested with supreme power, and _interested by some great and endearing motive_, such as hereditary possession of this power and influence, to maintain and defend this coalition of men.--All this is overlooked, and we attend only to the subordination which is indispensably necessary. Its grievances are immediately felt, and they are heightened tenfold by a delicacy or sensibility which springs from the great improvements in the accommodations and enjoyments of life, which the gradual usurpation and subsequent subordination have produced, and continue to support. But we are determined to have the elegance and grandeur of a palace without the prince.--We will not give up any of our luxuries and refinements, yet will not support those high ranks and those nice minds which produced them, and which must continue to keep them from degenerating into barbarous simplicity and coarse sensuality. We would keep the philosophers, the poets, the artists, but not the Mæcenases. It is very true that in such a state there would be no _Conjuration des Philosophes_; for in such a state this vermin of _philosophes_ and scribblers would not have existed. In short, we would have what is impossible.