ABSTRACT
With respect to this, and other fictions, there was once a time, perhaps, when they had their use. With instruments of this temper, I will not deny but that some political workmay have been done, and that useful work, which, under the then circumstances of things, could hardly have been done with any other. But the season of Fiction is now over: insomuch thatwhat formerly might have been tolerated and countenanced under the name, would, if now attempted to be set on foot, be censured and stigmatized under the harsher appellations ofencroachment or imposture. To attempt to introduce any new one, would be now a crime; for which reason there is much danger, without any use, in vaunting andpropagating such as have been introduced already. In point of political discernment, the universal spread of learning has raised mankind in a manner to a level with each other, in comparison ofwhat they have been in any former time ; nor is any man now so far elevated above his fellows, as that he should be indulged in the dangerous licence of cheating them for their good.
