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Transcription

It is of importance that mankind become sensible of this truth; that bad men can never have a good government, and that men always will be bad, till laws and education make them good.—Nothing places the advantages of good laws and institutions in a stronger point of light, than that they are capable of encreasing the desire to possess property, at the same time that they create an abhorrence to acquire it unjustly. In a state of nature, the desires of a man are few, and it is well they are so; for few as they are, he often commits terrible outrages to gratify them. In a state, any degree civilized, it is true the appetites of a man are more keen, and the objects of his wishes more numerous, and they safely may be so; for he will seldom dare or desire to lay violent or unjust hands on the property of another, for the sake of encreasing his own. And yet there are many people who are incessantly stigmatizing government with odious epithets. If men will look into the subject, and trace effects to their proper source, they will know better by what names to call things.

FRENCH INSCRIPTION

TO the French Almanack for the year 1787, is a Frontispiece representing France seated on the Throne of Royalty, and Taking by the hand the Genius of America, with the following expressive motto: Homage des Americaines a la France, sous la regne de Louis XVI. Pacisicatenr des deux Mondes!