penetration he dreads, whose scorn he fears will follow a true knowledge
of his pursuits. Demand of him what he thinks of himself, he will shrink
from the question. Approach the bedside of this villain at the moment he
is dying; ask him if he would be willing to recommence, at the same
price, a life of similar agitation? If he is ingenuous, he will avow
that he has tasted neither repose nor happiness; that each crime filled
him with inquietude--that reflection prevented him from sleeping--that
the world has been to him only one continued scene of alarm--an
uninterrupted concatenation of terror--an everlasting, anxiety of mind;
--that to live peaceably upon bread and water, appears to him to be a
much happier, a more easy condition, than to possess riches, credit,
reputation, honours, on the same terms that he has himself acquired
them. If this villain, notwithstanding all his success, finds his
condition so deplorable, what must be thought of the feelings of those
who have neither the same resources nor the same advantages to succeed
in their criminal projects.

Thus, the system of necessity is a truth not only founded upon certain
experience, but, again, it establishes morals upon an immoveable basis.
Far from sapping the foundations of virtue, it points out its necessity;
it clearly shows the invariable sentiments it must excite--sentiments so
necessary, so strong, so congenial to his existence, that all the
prejudices of man--all the vices of his institutions--all the effect of
evil example, have never been able entirely to eradicate them from his
mind. When he mistakes the advantages of virtue, it ought to be ascribed
to the errors that are infused into him--to the irrationality of his
institutions: all his wanderings are the fatal consequences of error,--
the necessary result of prejudices which have identified themselves with
his existence. Let it not, therefore, any longer be imputed to his
nature that he has become wicked, but to those baneful opinions which he