penal law, and its operation. Virtuous sensibility is excited against the necessary muniments of property, and the correctives of crimes. Such was the mis-*application of great literary powers, that sprung from the boundless love of innovation. Speculative men have often, in theory, supported principles inconsistent with the common sense of mankind, and the well-being of society, without reducing their speculations to practice! A reader of these singular works must have reprobated doctrines that tended, if admitted, to destroy our respect for marriage, property, promises; our conviction of the immortality of the soul; the ties of natural affection, gratitude, friendship; every cement of civil and social duty; to overturn monarchy, laws, government, and every political institution. But it might have been supposed that the author
