Page:Modern Literature Volume 3 (1804).djvu/182

(it was said,) is an institution that could only be reconciled to a state of barbarism. It is a distinction equally impolitic and immoral, worthy of the times of ignorance and of rapine, which gave it birth; is a violation of the rights of that part of the nation that is deprived of it; and as equality becomes a stimulus towards distinction, so on the other hand this is the radical vice of a goverment, and the source of a variety of evils. It is impossible that there should be any uncommon instances of virtue in a state, when recompences belong exclusively to a certain class of society, and when it costs them no more to obtain these, than the trouble of being born. Amongst this list of privileged persons, virtues, talents, and genius, must of course be much less frequent than in the other classes, since without the possession of any of these qualities, they who belong