I think, without concert, we have
made the very same remark, on reading some of their pieces, which, being
written for other purposes, let us into a view of their social life. It
struck us that the habits of Paris had no resemblance to the finished
virtues, or to the polished vice, and elegant, though not blameless
luxury, of the capital of a great empire. Their society was more like
that of a den of outlaws upon a doubtful frontier,--of a lewd tavern for
the revels and debauches of banditti, assassins, bravoes, smugglers,
and their more desperate paramours, mixed with bombastic players, the
refuse and rejected offal of strolling theatres, puffing out ill-sorted
verses about virtue, mixed with the licentious and blasphemous songs
proper to the brutal and hardened course of life belonging to that sort
of wretches. This system of manners in itself is at war with all orderly
and moral society, and is in its neighborhood unsafe. If great bodies of
that kind were anywhere established in a bordering territory, we should
have a right to demand of their governments the suppression of such a
nuisance. What are we to do, if the government and the whole community
is of the same description? Yet that government has thought proper to
invite ours to lay by its unjust hatred, and to listen to the voice of
humanity as taught by their example.
The operation of dangerous and delusive first principles obliges us to
have recourse to the true ones.
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