From the conduct and popular influence of these Peres de l'Oratoire, some
truths may be deduced not altogether useless even to a country not liable
to such violent reforms. It affords an example of the danger arising
from those sudden and arbitrary innovations, which, by depriving any part
of the community of their usual means of living, and substituting no
other, tempt them to indemnify themselves by preying, in different ways,
on their fellow-citizens.--The daring and ignorant often become
depredators of private property; while those who have more talents, and
less courage, endeavour to succeed by the artifices which conciliate
public favour. I am not certain whether the latter are not to be most
dreaded of the two, for those who make a trade of the confidence of the
people seldom fail to corrupt them--they find it more profitable to
flatter their passions than to enlighten their understandings; and a
demagogue of this kind, who obtains an office by exciting one popular
insurrection, will make no scruple of maintaining himself in it by
another. An inferrence may likewise be drawn of the great necessity of
cultivating such a degree of useful knowledge in the middle order of
society, as may not only prevent their being deceived by interested
adventurers themselves, but enable them to instruct the people in their
true interests, and rescue them from becoming the instruments, and
finally the victims, of fraud and imposture.
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