MABLY, GABRIEL BONNOT DE, 1709-85, b. France; educated for the priesthood among the Jesuits of Lyons, and novitiated in the seminary of St. Sulpice, Paris. He resigned the priestly calling, and attracting the attention of cardinal De Teusin by the solidity of his conversation on state affairs, was attached to the bureau of the minister of foreign affairs, and became a power among the rninisters. After acquiring high position he broke with his patron the cardinal, because the former resolved to pronounce Protestant marriages null. Living in retirement he became author of works calling attention to the noble thoughts of Greek anti Roman authors, and to their wisdom in government. He lookeLl backward and not forward for his ideals, and failed to per ccive progressive development in modern civilization. In 1784, in a publication entitled Observations sal' le gouvernernent et les lois cies Etats UniS d' Amerique, he predicted the. early downfall of the United States, if they continued in the tnercantile road. In his old age he saw nothing that gave him encouragement that the world was not going to the bad, and obtained the surname of " Prophet of Evil." Ills early writings, after his retirement, are remarkable for the clearness with which they depict the danger of char acter which comes to nations with increase of wealth and luxuries, and show that commerce and the arts serve but to corrupt peoples without adding to their real happiness. Sparta
with the Jesuit college grafted on it, Nvas his ideal community. Mably's writings were the source of many of the most radical and one-sided hobbies of French socialists and agrarians; and while he intended them to fortify respect for the more ancient forms of social life, they became the seed of the wildest democratic vagaries. He demanded the abolition of individual property, of the laws of inheritance, the suppression of com merce, of education, of amusements. Agriculture and the gymnasium as in Sparta, a state religion tolerating no other—these were the ends of his philosophy. " It is better" he writes, " that there should be but a million happy men upon all the earth, than the innumerable multitude of miserables and slaves who live a half-life in the midst of mis fortunes." Such crude and half-sided philosophy formed the school in which Marla,. St. Just, and Babeuf found apology for their fanaticism.