I have read, observed, and made diligent inquiry, and have been unable to find any abuse, practiced to any considerable extent, that has perished by voluntary renunciation on the part of those who profited by it.

On the contrary, I have seen many that have yielded to the manly resistance of those who suffered by them.
To describe the consequences of abuses, is the most efficient way of destroying the abuses themselves.

And this is true particularly in regard to abuses which, like the protective system, while inflicting real evil upon the masses, are to those who seem to profit by them only an illusion and a deception.
Well, then, does this species of morality realize all the social perfection which the sympathetic nature of the human heart and its noblest faculties cause us to hope for?
This I by no means pretend.
Admit the general diffusion of this defensive morality--which, after all, is only a knowledge that the best understood interests are in accord with general utility and justice.

A society, although very well regulated, might not be very attractive, where there were no knaves, only because there were no fools; where vice, always latent, and, so to speak, overcome by famine, would only stand in need of available plunder in order to be restored to vigor; where the prudence of the individual would be guarded by the vigilance of the mass, and, finally, where reforms, regulating external acts, would not have penetrated to the consciences of men.

Such a state of society we sometimes see typified in one of those exact, rigorous and just men who is ever ready to resent the slightest infringement of his rights, and shrewd in avoiding impositions.