But there was not merely profligacy among these Gauls. That alone would not have wrought their immediate ruin. Morals were bad enough in old Greece and Rome; as they were afterwards among the Turks: nevertheless as long as a race is strong; as long as there is prudence, energy, deep national feeling, outraged virtue does not avenge itself at once by general ruin. But it avenges itself at last, as Salvian shews--as all experience shews. As in individuals so in nations, unbridled indulgence of the passions must produce, and does produce, frivolity, effeminacy, slavery to the appetite of the moment, a brutalized and reckless temper, before which, prudence, energy, national feeling, any and every feeling which is not centered in self, perishes utterly. The old French noblesse gave a proof of this law, which will last as a warning beacon to the end of time. The Spanish population of America, I am told, gives now a fearful proof of this same terrible penalty. Has not Italy proved it likewise, for centuries past? It must be so, gentlemen. For national life is grounded on, is the development of, the life of the family. And where the root is corrupt, the tree must be corrupt likewise. It must be so. For Asmodeus does not walk alone. In his train follow impatience and disappointment, suspicion and jealousy, rage and cruelty, and all the passions which set man's hand against his fellow-man. It must be so. For profligacy is selfishness; and the family, and the society, the nation, exists only by casting away selfishness and by obeying law:--not only the outward law, which says in the name of God, 'Thou shalt not,' but the inward law, the Law of Christ, which says, 'Thou must;' the law of self- sacrifice, which selfish lust tramples under foot, till there is no more cohesion left between man and man, no more trust, no more fellow-help, than between the stags who fight for the hinds; and God help the nation which has brought itself to that!