They
have attempted to confound all sorts of citizens, as well as they could,
into one homogeneous mass; and then they divided this their amalgama
into a number of incoherent republics. They reduce men to loose
counters, merely for the sake of simple telling, and not to figures
whose power is to arise from their place in the table. The elements of
their own metaphysics might have taught them better lessons. The troll
of their categorical table might have informed them that there was
something else in the intellectual world besides SUBSTANCE and QUANTITY.
They might learn from the catechism of metaphysics that there were eight
heads more, in every complex deliberation, which they have never thought
of; though these, of all the ten, are the subjects on which the skill of
man can operate anything at all. So far from this able disposition of
some of the old republican legislators, which follows with a solicitous
accuracy the moral conditions and propensities of men, they have leveled
and crushed together all the orders which they found, even under the
coarse, unartificial arrangement of the monarchy, in which mode of
government the classing of the citizens is not of so much importance as
in a republic. It is true, however, that every such classification, if
properly ordered, is good in all forms of government; and composes a
strong barrier against the excesses of despotism, as well as it is the
necessary means of giving effect and permanence to a republic.
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