p.

4

that men who know what is right, will do what is right :
for if this is not the general fact, then intelligence will not
preserve a just administration, nor maintain the constitution
and laws. But from what evidence can we infer that men
who know what is right will do what is right? In what
history of mankind, political or ecclesiastical, are the facts
recorded, which authorize the presumption, much less the
belief, that correct action will proceed from correct know-
ledge? Such an effect would imply the absence of all de-
pravity in the hearts of men; a supposition which not only
revelation, but all history forbids us to admit.

Let me ask, Sir, whether the Greeks, and particularly
the Athenians, were not an intelligent people? Were they
not intelligent when they banished the ablest statesmen and
generals, and the purest patriots of their state? Was their
intelligence sufficient to insure, at all times, a just adminis-
tration of the laws? In short, if intelligence could preserve
a republic, why were not the Grecian republics preserved?

Then let us turn our attention to the Roman state.
Were not Sylla and Marius intelligent men, when they rent the
commonwealth with faction, and deluged Rome with blood?
Were not Caesar and Anthony and Lepidus, and Crassus
and Brutus and Octavianus, intelligent men? Did not the
Roman commonwealth fall into ruins in the most enlighten-
ed period of its existence? And were not the immediate in-
struments of its overthrow some of the most intelligent men
that the pagan world has produced?

Then look at France during the revolution, when there
was no settled government to control reason. Were not
the leading men of the parties intelligent men?--men who