Page:Modern Literature Volume 3 (1804).djvu/189

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the literary, as in other classes, a very great number judged and acted not from original conviction and determination, but from example; and many were merely driven round in Tom Paine's political mill, without any comprehension of the tendency and effects of the labours in which they were employed. They declaimed against the usurpation of establishments, merely because others did so before them. These pretended investigators of human right, and explainers of human happiness, considered the Rights of Man, merely because the consideration was fashionable; and if the doctrines of the Pope's supremacy had been in vogue, would have been the ardent partizans of a Guise, a Lorrain, and an Alva, and would have praised the massacres of August 24th, 1572, as readily as of August 10th, 1792. In literature, indeed, aristocracy is very prevalent; there