Page:Modern Literature Volume 3 (1804).djvu/193

 providence, a pair of breeches instead of a leg of mutton ; so a blacksmith could leave his anvil for his political pulpit, and vend the quack medicines of Tom Paine.

But though revolutionary politics diffused themselves over great numbers of the ignorant votaries of literature, they extended to many others of a very contrary description, and efforts of talents and erudition were wasted in supporting extravagant paradoxes, pernicious principles, and wild theories, that could have informed and instructed mankind by valuable reasonings and inculcations; and our hero had occasion to see the effect of the Turgot theory of the perfectibility of man fully exemplified. The English champion of this doctrine was St. Leon, a writer of very considerable ingenuity, who, with the œconomique