LETTER C. Rica to the Same.

THE other day I wrote to thee about the great inconstancy of the French in their fashions. Yet it is inconceivable to what a degree they are infatuated with them; they determine every thing by them: they are the rules by which they judge of the transactions of other nations: whatever is foreign appears to them ridiculous. I confess to thee, I know not how to reconcile this madness for their customs, with the inconstancy with which they are daily changing them. When I tell thee that they despise

every thing that is foreign, I speak only of trifles; for, upon important occasions, they seem to be diffident even of themselves, to their own degradation. They are very ready to allow other nations are wiser, provided they will allow that they are better dressed: they are quite willing to submit themselves to the laws of a rival nation, provided French peruke-makers may decide, like legislators, the shape of foreign perukes. To them nothing appears so glorious, as to see the taste of their cooks reign from north to south, and the ordinances of their tire-women extended through all the toilettes of Europe. With these noble advantages what does it signify to them if their good sense comes to them from abroad, and that they have taken from their neighbours every thing that relates to their government, political and civil? Who would think, that a kingdom, the most ancient, and the most powerful in Europe, should have been governed about ten ages by laws which were not made for them? If the French had been conquered it would not be difficult to comprehend this: but they are the conquerors. They have abandoned the ancient laws made by their first kings, in the general assemblies of the nation; and what is more extraordinary, the Roman laws, which they have taken instead of them, were partly made, and partly digested by the emperors cotemporary with their legislators. And, that the theft might be complete, and that all their good sense might be derived from others, they have adopted all the constitutions of the popes, and made them a new part of their law; a new kind of slavery. In these latter times they have, it is true, digested in writing some statutes of cities and provinces; but they are almost all taken from the Roman law. This multitude of adopted, and, if I may say, naturalized laws, is so great, that it oppresses equally justice and the judge. But these volumes of laws are nothing in comparison to that terrible army of glossers, commentators, and compilers: a set of men as weak, as to the justness of their understanding, as they are strong from their number. This is not all: these foreign laws have introduced formalities, whose excess is a disgrace to human reason. It would be very difficult to determine whether formality hath been more hurtful when it got into the law, or when it took place in physic: whether it hath ravaged more under the robe of the lawyer, than under the large hat of the physician; and whether, in the one, it hath ruined more people, than it hath killed under the other.

Paris, the 17th of the moon Saphar,
1717.