THOUGHTS ON THE MECHANISM OF SOCIETIES. By the MARQUIS DE CASAUX, FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY. _TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH_ (_Under the Inspection of the Author_) By PARKYNS MAC MAHON. _If Men would be content to graft upon Nature, and assist her operations, what mighty effects might we expect!_ SPECTATOR. _LONDON, Printed by T. Spilsbury, Snowhill._ Sold by G. G. J. and J. ROBINSON, in _Pater-noster Row_; W. RICHARDSON, under the _Royal Exchange_; and J. DEBRETT, _Piccadilly._ M,DCC,LXXXVI. PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. It is not a _treatise_ that the Author announces; it is nothing more than _Thoughts on the Mechanism of Societies_. Such a title does not confine a Writer to a regular plan; it saves him even the risk of preparing his Readers for a chain of ideas which cannot escape their sagacity if it exist, and on which they cannot be deceived if it do not. But in a picture consecrated to the world at large as well as to his own Country, to the People as well as to their Rulers, it was necessary that the most striking object, the object to which their first attention was called, should be of so general an interest, as to entice them progressively to an investigation of all those details which deserve most to be scrutinised, and of which the different relations are either little known, or greatly mistaken.