Indeed, when I consider the face of
the kingdom of France, the multitude and opulence of her cities, the
useful magnificence of her spacious high-roads and bridges, the
opportunity of her artificial canals and navigations opening the
conveniences of maritime communication through a solid continent of so
immense an extent,--when I turn my eyes to the stupendous works of her
ports and harbors, and to her whole naval apparatus, whether for war or
trade,--when I bring before my view the number of her fortifications,
constructed with so bold and masterly a skill, and made and maintained
at so prodigious a charge, presenting an armed front and impenetrable
barrier to her enemies upon every side,--when I recollect how very small
a part of that extensive region is without cultivation, and to what
complete perfection the culture of many of the best productions of the
earth have been brought in France,--when I reflect on the excellence of
her manufactures and fabrics, second to none but ours, and in some
particulars not second,--when I contemplate the grand foundations of
charity, public and private,--when I survey the state of all the arts
that beautify and polish life,--when I reckon the men she has bled for
extending her fame in war, her able statesmen, the multitude of her
profound lawyers and theologians, her philosophers, her critics, her
historians and antiquaries, her poets and her orators, sacred and
profane,--I behold in all this something which awes and commands the
imagination, which checks the mind on the brink of precipitate and
indiscriminate censure, and which demands that we should very seriously
examine what and how great are the latent vices that could authorize us
at once to level so spacious a fabric with the ground.
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