Thus, Madam, if it should be demanded of you what you would substitute for the benefit of society, in place of visionary reveries, I reply, a sensible morality, a good education, profitable habits, self-evident principles of duty, wise laws, which even the wicked cannot misunderstand, but which may correct their evil purposes, and recompenses that may tend to the promotion of virtue. The education of the present day tends only to make youth the slaves of superstition; the virtues which it inculcates on them are only those of fanaticism, to render the mind subject to the priests for the remainder of life; the motives to duty are only fictitious and imaginary; the rewards and punishments which it exhibits in an obscure glimmering, produce no other effect than to make useless enthusiasts and dangerous fanatics. The principles on which enthusiasm establishes morality are changing and ruinous; those on which the morality of reason is established are fixed, and cannot be overturned. Seeing, then, that man, a reasonable being, should be chiefly occupied about his preservation and happiness--that he should love virtue--that he should be sensible of its advantages--that he should fear the consequences of crime--is it to be wondered I should insist so much on the practice of virtue as his chief good? Men ought to hate crime because it leads to misery. Society, to exist, must receive the united virtue of its members, obedience to good laws, the activity and intelligence of citizens to defend its privileges and its rights. Laws are good when they invite the members of society to labor for reciprocal good offices. Laws are just when they recompense or punish in proportion to the good or evil which is done to society. Laws supported by a visible authority should be founded on present motives; and thus they would have more force than those of religion, which are founded on uncertain motives, imaginary and removed from this world, and which experience proves cannot suffice to curb the passions of bad men, nor show them their duty by the fear of punishments after death.