There is nothing, however, which perfects men's virtue more than legislation and colonization.

And yet I have a word to say which may seem to be depreciatory of legislators.

'What is that ?' I was going to make the saddening reflection, that accidents of all sorts are the true legislators,--wars and pestilences and famines and the frequent recurrence of bad seasons.

The observer will be inclined to say that almost all human things are chance; and this is certainly true about navigation and medicine, and the art of the general.

But there is another thing which may equally be said.