In short, Sir, it seems to me, that this now ecclesiastical establishment is intended only to be temporary, and preparatory to the utter abolition, under any of its forms, of the Christian religion, whenever the minds of men are prepared for this last stroke against it, by the accomplishment of the plan for bringing its ministers into universal con- tempt. They who will not believe that the philo- sophical fanatics who guide in these matters, have long entertained such a design, are utterly ignorant of their character and proceedings. These enthu- siasts do not scruple to avow their opinion, that a state can subsist without any religion better than with one; and that they are able to supply the place of any good which may be in it, by a project of their own — namely, by a sort of education they have imagined, founded in a knowledge of the physical wants of men; progressively carried to an enlightened self-interest, which, when well under- stood, they tell us, will identify with an interest more enlarged and public. The scheme of this education has been long known. Of late they distinguish it (as they have got an entirely new nomenclature of technical terms'* by the name of a Civic Education.
REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 203 I hope their partisans in England (to whom I rather attribute very inconsiderate conduct, than the ultimate object in this detestable design) will succeed neither in the pillage of the ecclesiastics, nor in the introduction of a principle of popular election to our bishopricks and parochial cures. This, in the present condition of the world, would be the last corruption of the church; the utter ruin of the clerical character; the most dangerous shock that the state ever received through a mis- understood arrangement of religion. I know well enough that the bishopricks and cures, under kingly and seignoral patronage, as now they are in England, and as they have been lately in France, are some- times acquired by unworthy methods; but the other mode of ecclesiastical canvass subjects them infinitely more surely and more generally to all the evil arts of low ambition, which, operating on and through greater numbers, will produce mischief in proportion.
Those of you who have robbed the clergy, think that they shall easily reconcile their conduct to all protestant nations; because the clergy, whom they have thus plundered, degraded, and given over to mockery and scorn, are of the Roman Catholic, that is, of their own pretended persuasion. I have no doubt that some miserable bigots will be found here, as well as elsewhere, who hate sects and parties different from their own, more than they love the substance of religion; and who are more angry with those who differ from them in their particular plans and systems, than displeased with those who attack the foundation of our common hope. These men will write and speak on the subject in the manner '204 REFLECTIONS ON THE that is to be expected from their temper and cha- racter. Burnet says, that, when he was in France, in the year 1683, "the method which carried over the men of the finest parts to popery was this — they brought themselves to doubt of the whole Christian religion. When that was once done, it seemed a more indifferent thing of what side or form they continued outwardly." If this was then the ecclesiastic policy of France, it is what they have since but too much reason to repent of. They preferred atheism to a form of religion not agreeable to their ideas. They succeeded in destroying that form; and atheism has succeeded in destroying them. I can readily give credit to Burnet's story; because I have observed too much of a similar spirit (for a little of it is " much too much ") amongst ourselves. The humour, however, is not general.
The teachers who reformed our religion in Eng- land, bore no sort of resemblance to your present reforming doctors in Paris. Perhaps they were (like those whom they opposed) rather more than could be wished under the influence of a party spirit; but they were most sincere believers; men of the most fervent and exalted piety; ready to die (as some of them did die) like true heroes in defence of their particular ideas of Christianity; as they would with equal fortitude, and more cheerfully, for that stock of general truth, for the branches of which they contended with their blood. These men would have disavowed with horror those wretches who claimed a fellowship with them upon no other titles than those of their having pillaged the persons with whom they maintained controversies, and their REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 205 having despised the common religion, for the purity of which they exerted themselves with a zeal which unequivocally bespoke their highest reverence for the substance of that system which they wished to reform. Many of their descendants have retained the same zeal, but (as less engaged in conflict) with more moderation. They do not forget that justice and mercy are substantial parts of religion. Impious men do not recommend themselves to their communion by iniquity and cruelty towards any description of their fellow-creatures.
We hear these new teachers continually boasting of their spirit of toleration. That those persons should tolerate all opinions, who think none to be of estimation, is a matter of small merit. Equal neglect is not impartial kindness. The species of benevolence which arises from contempt, is no true charity. There are in England abundance of men who tolerate in the true spirit of toleration. They think the dogmas of religion, though in different degrees, are all of moment; and that amongst them there is, as amongst all things of value, a just ground of preference. They favour, therefore, and they tolerate. They tolerate, not because they despise opinions, but because they respect justice. They would reverently and affectionately protect all religions, because they love and venerate the great principle upon which they all agree, and the great object to which they are all directed. They begin more and more plainly to discern, that we have all a common cause, as against a common enemy. They will not be so misled by the spirit of faction, as not to distinguish what is done in 206 UEFLECTIONS ON THE favour of their subdivision, from those acts of hos- tility which, through some particular description, are aimed at the whole corps, in which they them- selves, under another denomination, are included. It is impossible for me to say what may be the character of every description of men amongst us. But I speak for the greater part; and for them I must tell you, that sacrilege is no part of their doctrine of good works; that, so far from calling you into their fellowship on such title, if your pro- fessors are admitted to their communion, they must carefully conceal their doctrine of the lawfulness of the proscription of innocent men; and that they must make restitution of all stolen goods whatsoever. Till then they are none of ours.
You may suppose that we do not approve your confiscation of the revenues of bishops, and deans, and chapters, and parochial clergy possessing in- dependent estates arising from land, because we have the same sort of establishment in England. That objection, you will say, cannot hold as to the confiscation of the goods of monks and nuns, and the abolition of their order. It is true that this particular part of your general confiscation does not affect England, as a precedent in point: but the reason applies, and it goes a great way. The long parliament confiscated the lands of deans and chap- ters in England on the same ideas upon which your Assembly set to sale the lands of the monastic orders. But it is in the principle of injustice that the danger lies, and not in the description of persons on whom it is first exercised. I see, in a country very Rear us, a course of policy pursued, which sets REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 207 justice, the common concern of mankind, at defiance. With the National Assembly of France, possession is nothing, law and usage are nothing. I see the National Assembly openly reprobate the doctrine of prescription, which one of the greatest of their own lawyers* tells us, with great truth, is a part of the law of nature. He tells us, that the positive as- certainment of its limits, and its security from in- vasion, were among the causes for which civil society itself has been instituted. If prescription be once shaken, no species of property is secure, when it once becomes an object large enough to tempt the cupidity of indigent power. I see a practice per- fectly correspondent to their contempt of this great fundamental part of natural law. I see the con- fiscators begin with bishops, and chapters, and monas- teries; but I do not see them end there. I see the princes of the blood, who, by the oldest usages of that kingdom, held large landed estates, (hardly with the compliment of a debate,) deprived of their possessions, and, in lieu of their stable independent property, reduced to the hope of some precarious, charitable pension, at the pleasure of an Assembly, which of course will pay little regard to the rights of pensioners at pleasure, when it despises those of legal proprietors. Flushed with the insolence of the first inglorious victories, and pressed by the distresses caused by the lust of unhallowed lucre, disappointed but not discouraged, they have at length ventured completely to subvert all property of all descriptions throughout the extent of a great 208 REFLECTIONS ON THE kingdom. They have compelled all men, in all transactions of commerce, in the disposal of lands, in civil dealing, and through the whole communion of life, to accept as perfect payment and good and lawful tender, the symbols of their speculations on a projected sale of their plunder. What vestiges of liberty or property have they left? The tenant- right of a cabbage-garden, a year's interest in a hovel, the good-will of an ale-house or a baker's shop, the very shadow of a constructive property, are more ceremoniously treated in our parliament, than with you the oldest and most valuable landed pos- sessions, in the hands of the most respectable per- sonages, or than the whole body of the monied and commercial interest of your country. We entertain a high opinion of the legislative authority; but we have never dreamt that parliaments had any right whatever to violate property, to overrule prescription, or to force a currency of their own fiction in the place of that which is real, and recognized by the law of nations. But you, who began with refusing to submit to the most moderate restraints, have ended by establishing an unheard-of despotism. I find the ground upon which your contiscators go is this: that indeed their proceedings could not be supported in a court of justice; but that the rules of prescription cannot bind a legislative assembly.* So that this legislative assembly of a free nation sits, not for the security, but for the destruction of property, and not of property only, but of every rule and maxim which can give it stability, and of those instruments which can alone give it circulation.
• Speech of Mr. Cainus. published by order of the National Assembly.
REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 209 When the Anabaptists of Munster, in the sixteenth century, had filled Germany with confusion, by their system of levelling, and their wild opinions concern, ing property, to what country in Europe did not the progress of their fury furnish just cause of alarm? Of all things, wisdom is the most terrified with epidemical fanaticism, because of all enemies it is that against which she is the least able to furnish any kind of resource. We cannot be ignorant of the spirit of atheistical fanaticism, that is inspired by a multitude of writings, dispersed with incredible assi- duity and expense, and by sermons delivered in all the streets and places of public resort in Paris. These writings and sermons have filled the populace with a black and savage atrocity of mind, which supersedes in them the common feelings of nature, as well as all sentiments of morality and religion; insomuch that these wretches are induced to bear with a sullen patience the intolerable distresses brought upon them by the violent convulsions and permutations that have been made in property?* The spirit of proselytism attends this spirit of fanati- cism. They have societies to cabal and correspond at home and abroad for the propagation of their • Whether the following description is strictly true, 1 know not; but it is what the publishers would have pass for true, in order to animate others. In a letter from Toul, given in one of their papers, is the following passage concerning the people of that district: " Dans la Revolution actuelle, ils ont resiste a toutes les si'ductinvs da bigotitme, mix persicuUotu et aux Iracasseries des ennemis de la Revolution. Oubliant leurx j>lus grand* iiitirrts pour rendre hom- mage aux vucs d'ordre general qui ont determine l'Assemblee Nationale, ils voient, sans se plaindre, supprimer cette foulc d'etablissemens ecdesiastiques parlesquels ihsubsUtoicnt; et meme, en perdant leur siege episcopal la seul de toutes ses ressources qui ponvoit, on plutot qui demit, en inulc t'quitr. leur ctre conservee; 210 REFLECTIONS ON TJHB tenets. The republic of Berne, one of the happiest, the most prosperous, and the best governed countries upon earth, is one of the great objects, at the de- struction of which they aim. I am told they have in some measure succeeded in sowing there the seeds of discontent. They are busy throughout Germany. Spain and Italy have not been untried. England is not left out of the comprehensive sclieme of their malignant charity; and in England we rind those who stretch out their arms to them, who re- commend their example from more than one pulpit, and who choose, in more than one periodical meet- ing, publicly to correspond with them, to applaud them, and to hold them up as objects for imitation; who receive from them tokens of confraternity, and standards consecrated amidst their rites and mysteries;* who suggest to them leagues of per- petual amity, at the very time when the power to which our constitution has exclusively delegated the federative capacity of this kingdom, may find it expedient to make war upon them.
It is not the confiscation of our church pro- perty from this example in France that I dread, though I think this would be no trifling evil. The great source of my solicitude is, lest it should ever condamnes it la plus effrayante misire, sans avoir tti >ti jut tire entendtu, Us ne murmurent point, ils restent fldeles aux principes duplus pur patriotisme; ilssont encore pretes a verier leur sain/ pour le maintien de la constitution, qui va reduire leur ville it la /i/iis deplorable nulliti." These people are not supposed to have endured those sufferings and injustices in a struggle for liberty, for the same account states truly that they had been always free; their patience in beggar; and ruin, and their suffering, without remonstrance, the most flagrant and confessed injustice, if strictly true, can be nothing but the effect of this dire fanaticism. A gre Li multitude all over France is in the same condition and the same temper.
* See the proceedings of the Oonfi deration at \ REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 211 be considered in England as the policy of a state to seek a resource in confiscations of any kind; or that any one description of citizens should be brought to regard any of the others as their proper prey.* Nations are wading deeper and deeper into an ocean of boundless debt. Public debts, which at first were a security to governments, by interesting many in the public tranquillity, are likely in their excess to become the means of their subversion. If govern- ments provide for these debts by heavy impositions, they perish by becoming odious to the people. If they do not provide for them, they will be undone oy the efforts of the most dangerous of all parties; ;[ mean an extensive, discontented monied interest, njured and not destroyed. The men who compose ;his interest look for their security, in the first in- stance, to the fidelity of government; in the second, ,o its power. If they find the old governments jffete, worn out, and with their springs relaxed, so ' is not to be of sufficient vigour for their purposes, hey may seek new ones that shall be possessed of • " Si plures sunt ii quibus improbe datum est, quam ill i quibus njuste ademptum est, idcireo plus etiam valent? Non enim nu- nero haec judicantur sed pondere. Quam autem habet aequitatem, it agrum multis annis, aut etiam Sificulis ante possessum, qui nullum labuit habeat; qui autem habuit amittat? Ac. propter hoc injuria ;enus, Lacedaemonii Lysandrum Ephorum expulerunt: Agin regem quod rmnquam antea apud eos acciderat) necaverunt: exque eo empore tanfce discordise secutae sunt, ut et tyranni existerint, et iptimates exterminarentur, et preclarissime constituta respublica lilaberetur. Nee vero solum ipsa cecidit, sed etiam reliquam Groe- •iam evertit contagionibus malorum, qua? a Lacedsemoniis profecta? uanarunt latius." — After speaking of the conduct of the model of rue patriots, Aratus of Sycion, which was in a very different spirit, le says, " Sic par est agere cum civibus; non ut bis jam vidimus, i—THm in foro ponere et bona civium voci subjicere praconis. At He Graecus (id quod fuit sapientis et pnestantis viri) omnibus eon ulendum esse putavit: eaque est summa ratio et sapicntia bom ivis, commoda civium nnn divellere, Bed "nines eadem Xquitate ontintre. "—Cic. Off. 1. 2.
•Jl'2 REFLECTIONS ON THE more energy; and this energy will be derived, not from an acquisition of resources, but from a con- tempt of justice. Revolutions are favourable to confiscation; and it is impossible to know under what obnoxious names the next confiscations will be authorized. I am sure that the principles pre- dominant in France extend to very many persons, and descriptions of persons, in all countries, who think their innoxious indolence their security. This kind of innocence in proprietors may be argued into in- utility; and inutility into an unfitness for their estates. Many parts of Europe are in open disorder. In many others there is a hollow murmuring under ground; a confused movement is felt, that threatens a general earthquake in the political world. Already confederacies and correspondences of the most extra- ordinary nature are forming in several countries.* In such a state of things we ought to hold ourselves upon our guard. In all mutations (if mutations must be) the circumstance which will serve most to blunt the edge of their mischief, and to promote what good may be in them, is, that they should find us with our minds tenacious of justice, and tender of property.
But it will be argued, that this confiscation in France ought not to alarm, other nations. They say it is not made from wanton rapacity; that it is a great measure of national policy, adopted to remove an extensive, inveterate, superstitious mischief. It is witli the greatest difficulty that I am able to separate policy from justice. Justice is itself the - See two books entitled, " Enige Originalichriften des lUumina uml rolpon des tlluminatenordens." Xunchen, REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 213 great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circum- stances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.
When men are encouraged to go into a certain mode of life by the existing laws, and protected in that mode as in a lawful occupation; when they have accommodated all their ideas and all their habits to it; when the law had long made their adherence to its rules a ground of reputation, and their de- parture from them a ground of disgrace and even of penalty — I am sure it is unjust in legislature, by an arbitrary act, to offer a sudden violence to their minds and their feelings; forcibly to degrade them from their state and condition, and to stigmatize with shame and infamy that character and those customs which before had been made the measure of their happiness and honour. If to this be added an expulsion from their habitations, and a confiscation of all their goods, I am not sagacious enough to discover how this despotic sport, made of the feelings, consciences, prejudices, and properties of men, can be discriminated from the rankest tyranny.
If the injustice of the course pursued in France be clear, the policy of the measure, that is, the public benefit to be expected from it, ought to be at least as evident, and at least as important. To a man who acts under the influence of no passion, who has nothing in view in his projects but the public good, a great difference will immediately strike him, between what policy would dictate on the original introduction of such institutions, and on a question of their total abolition, where they have cast their "214 aEFLECTIONS ON THE roots wide and deep, and where, by long habit, things more valuable than themselves are so adapted to them, and in a manner interwoven with them, that the one cannot be destroyed without notably impair- ing the other. He might be embarrassed, if the case were really such as sophisters represent it in their paltry style of debating. But in this, as in most questions of state, there is a middle. There is something else than the mere alternative of absolute destruction, or unr.eformed existence. Spartam iiactus es; hanc exorna. This is, in my opinion, a rule of profound sense, and ought never to depart from the mind of an honest reformer. I cannot con- ceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scrib- ble what ever he pleases. A man full of warm specu- lative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it; but a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Every thing else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.
There are moments in the fortune of states, when particular men are called to make improvements by great mental exertion. In those moments, even I when they seem to enjoy the confidence of their prince and country, and to be invested with full authority, they have not always apt instruments. A politician, to do great things, looks for a power •, what our workmen call a purchase s and if he 9ndfl REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 215 that power, in politics as in mechanics, he cannot be at a loss to apply it. In the monastic institutions, in my opinion, was found a great power for the mechanism of politic benevolence. There were revenues with a public direction; there were men wholly set apart and dedicated to public purposes, without any other than public ties and public prin- ciples; men without the possibility of converting the estate of the community into a private fortune; men denied to self-interests, whose avarice is for some community; men to whom personal poverty is honour, and implicit obedience stands in the place of freedom. In vain shall a man look to the possi- bility of making such things when he wants them. The winds blow as they list. These institutions are the products of enthusiasm; they are the instruments of wisdom. Wisdom cannot create materials; they are the gifts of nature or of chance; her pride is in the use. The perennial existence of bodies corporate and their fortunes are things particularly suited to a man who has long views; who meditates designs that require time in fashioning, and which propose duration when they are accomplished. He is not deserving to rank high, or even to be mentioned in the order of great statesmen, who, having obtained the command and direction of such a power as existed in the wealth, the discipline, and the habits of such corporations as those which you have rashly destroyed, cannot find any way of converting it to the great and lasting benefit of his country. On the view of this subject, a thousand uses suggest themselves to a contriving mind. To destroy any power, growing wild from the rank productive force 216 REFLECTIONS ON THE