creatures; are themselves but effects, which, as first causes, we choose to worship. They certainly grew under the same shade in which learning flourished. They too may decay with their natural protecting principles. With you, for the present at least, they all threaten to disappear together. Where trade and manufactures are wanting to a people, and the spirit of nobility and religion re|mains, sentiment supplies, and not always ill sup|plies their place; but if commerce and the arts should be lost in an experiment to try how well a state may stand without these old fundamental principles, what sort of a thing must be a nation of gross, stupid, ferocious, and at the same time, poor and sordid barbarians, destitute of reli|gion, honour, or manly pride, possessing nothing at present, and hoping for nothing hereafter.
I wish you may not be going fast, and by the shortest cut, to that horrible and disgustful situa|tion. Already there appears a poverty of concep|tion, a coarseness and vulgarity in all the pro|ceedings of the assembly and of all their instruc|tors. Their liberty is not liberal. Their sci|ence is presumptuous ignorance. Their huma|nity is savage and brutal.
It is not clear, whether in England we learned those grand and decorous principles, and manners, of which considerable traces yet remain, from you, or whether you took them from us. But to you, I think, we trace them best. You seem to me to be—gentis incunabula nostrae. France has always more or less influenced manners in England; and when your fountain is choaked up and polluted,
