Mr Holcroft was among the foremost and most ardent of those who indulged their imaginations, in contemplating such an Utopian, or ideal state of society, and in reasoning on the manner in which the great leading principle of morality would then be reduced to practice. In such a state of things, he believed that wars, bloodshed, and national animosities, would cease; that peace and good-will would reign among men; and that the feeling of patriotism, necessary as it now is to preserve the independence of states, and repel the ravages of unprincipled and ambitious invaders, would die away of itself with national jealousies and antipathies, with ambition, war, and foreign conquest. Family attachments would also be weakened or lost in the general principle of benevolence, when every man would be a brother. Exclusive friendships could no longer be formed, because they would interfere with the true claims of justice and humanity, and because it would be no longer necessary to keep alive the stream of the affections, by confining them to a particular channel, when they would be continually refreshed, invigorated, and would overflow with the diffusive soul of mutual philanthropy, and generous, undivided sympathy with all men. Another feeling, no less necessary at present, would then be forgotten, namely, gratitude to benefactors; but not from a selfish, hateful spirit, or hardened insensibility to kind offices; but because all men would in fact be equally ready to promote one another’s welfare, that is, equally benefactors and friends to each other, without the motives either of gratitude or self-interest. Promises, in like manner, would no longer be binding, or necessary: not in order that men might take advantage of this liberty to consult their own whims or convenience, and trick one another, but that by being free from every inferior obligation, they might be enabled more steadily and directly to pursue the simple dictates of reason and conscience. False honour, false shame, vanity, emulation, etc. would upon the same principle give way to other and better motives. It is evident that laws and punishments would cease with the cause that produces them, the commission of crimes. Neither would the distinctions of property subsist in a society, where the interests and feelings of all would be more intimately blended than they are at present among members of the same family, or among the dearest friends. Neither the allurements of ease, or wealth, nor the dread of punishment, would be required to excite to industry, or to prevent fraud and violence, in a state (such as has been supposed), where all would cheerfully labour for the good of all; and where the most refined reason, and inflexible justice actuating a whole community, could scarcely fail to ensure the same effects which at present result from the motives of honesty and honour. The labour, therefore, requisite to produce the necessaries of life, would be equally divided among the