Thoughts on the mechanism of societies

By the Marquis de CASAUX, FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH ( Under the Inspection of the Author ) By Parkyns Mac Mahon.
If Men would be content to graft upon Nature, and assist her operations, what mighty effects might we expect!
Spectator.
LONDON, Printed by T. Spilsbury, Snowhill.
Sold by G. G. J. and J. Robinson, in Pater-noster Row ; W. Richardson, under the Royal Exchange ; and J. Debrett, Piccadilly.
M,DCC,LXXXVI.


It is not a treatise that the Author announces; it is nothing more than Thoughts on the Mechanism of Societies . Such a title does not confine a Writer to a regular plan; it saves him even the risk of preparing his Readers for a chain of ideas which cannot escape their sagacity if it exist, and on which they cannot be deceived if it do not. But in a picture consecrated to the world at large as well as to his own Country, to the People as well as to their Rulers, it was necessary that the most striking object, the object to which their first attention was called, should be of so general an interest, as to entice them progressively to an investigation of all those details which deserve most to be scrutinised, and of which the different relations are either little known, or greatly mistaken.