Chapter II: Section III

Great ignorance and debasement still manifest in various features of the
popular character.--Entire want, in early life, of any idea of a general
and comprehensive purpose to be pursued--Gratification of the senses
the chief good.--Cruelty a subsidiary resource.--Disposition to cruelty
displayed and confirmed by common practices.--Confirmed especially by
the manner of slaughtering animals destined for food.--Displayed in the
abuse of the laboring animals.--General characteristic of the people an
indistinct and faint sense of right and wrong.--Various
exemplifications.--Dishonor to our country that the people should have
remained in such a condition.--Effects of their ignorance as appearing
in several parts of the economy of life; in their ordinary occupations;
in their manner of spending their leisure time, including the Sunday; in
the state of domestic society; consequences of this last as seen in the
old age of parents.--The lower classes placed by their want of education
out of amicable communication with the higher.--Unhappy and dangerous
consequences of this.--Great decline of the respect which in former
times the people felt toward the higher classes and the existing order
of the community.--Progress of a contrary spirit.