All governments and all
prejudices of society were to be thrown into the melting-pot; out of
the fusion was to arise the new era, the millennium. All other evil
things would cease to exist, as well as monopolies, titles, places, and
pensions. Sickness, even death, perhaps, might be evaded by the skill
of a new science. Who could tell? Franklin had suggested this, half in
jest, years before; Condorcet believed and asserted it now. Ignorance
and misery, at all events, should come to an end. When kings and a
wicked self-seeking aristocracy should be swept away, the divine sense
of right, which God had implanted in the people, would rule; there
could be no wars; armies and fleets would become useless; taxes would
amount to nothing. All the nations would form one grand republic, with
a universal convention sitting at the world's centre, to watch over the
rights of man! Liberty, virtue, happiness, seemed ready to descend upon
the earth.
"Jam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto,
Ac toto surget gens aurea mundo."
As each week brought the news of some stupendous change, a kind of
madness seized upon the minds of men.
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