[In 18th-century Venice,] religion, that salutary curb on human passion, has ... become a laughing stock. I am bound to believe that the gallows benefit society, being an instrument for punishing crime and deterring would-be criminals. But our new-fangled philosophers have denounced the gallows as a tyrannical prejudice, and by so doing they have multiplied murders on the highway, robberies and acts of violence, a hundredfold ...

It was pronounced a musty and barbarous prejudice to keep women at home for the supervision of their sons and daughters, ... their domestic service and economy. At once the women poured forth, storming like Bacchanals, screaming "Liberty! Liberty!" The streets swarmed with them. ... Meanwhile they abandoned their vapory brains to fashions, frivolous invention, ... amours, coquetries, and all sorts of nonsense. ... The husbands had not the courage to oppose the ruin of their honor, their substance, their families. They were afraid of being pilloried with that dreadful word 'prejudice.' ... Good morals, modesty, and chastity received the name of prejudice. ... When all the so-called prejudices had been put to flight, ... many great and remarkable blessings appeared: ... irreligion, respect and reverence annulled, justice overturned. ... criminals encouraged and bewept, heated imaginations, sharpened senses, animalism, indulgence in all lusts and passions, imperious luxury. ... bankruptcies. ... adulteries.