No More Learning

In short, Sir, it seems to me that this new 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 contempt. They who will
not believe that the philosophical fanatics who guide
in these matters have long entertained such a design
are utterly ignorant of their character and proceedings. These enthusiasts 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 understood, they tell us, will identify with an interest
more enlarged and public. The scheme of this educatioin has been long known. Of late they distin
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 429
guish it (as they have got an entirely new nomenclature of technical terms) by the name of a Civic
-Education.
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
bishoprics 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 char
acter, the most dangerous shock that the state ever
received through a misunderstood arrangement of
religion. I know well enough that the bishoprics
and cures, under kingly and seigniorial patronage, as
now they are in England, and as they have been
lately in France, are sometimes 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
? ? ? ? 430 REFLECTIONS ON THE
the foundation of our common hope. These men
will write and speak on the subject in the manner
that is to be expected from their temper and character. 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
humor, however, is not general.
The teachers who reformed our religion in England
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
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 431
they maintained controversies, and their 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 favor, 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 favor of their subdivision from those
? ? ? ? 432 REFLECTIONS ON THE
acts of hostility which, through some particular description, are aimed at the whole corps in which
they themselves, 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 professors
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 independent
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
tlhe lands of deans and chapters 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 near us, a course of policy
pursued, which sets justice, the common concern of
mankind, at defiance. With the National Assembly
of France possession is nothing, law and usage are
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 433
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 ascertainment of its limits, and its
security from invasion, 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
perfectly correspondent to their contempt of this great
fundamental part of natural law. I see the confiscators begin with bishops, and chapters, and monasteries; 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 their first
inglorious victories, and pressed by the distresses
caused by their 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 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
* Domat.
VOL. III. 28
? ? ? ? 434 REFLECTIONS ON THE
their plunder. What vestiges of liberty or property
have they left? The teinant-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 possessions, in the hands of the most
respectable personages, or than the whole body of the
moneyed 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 confiscators 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 de. .
struction 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.
When the Anabaptists of Munster, in the sixteenth
century, had filled Germany with confusion, by their
system of levelling, and their wild opinions concerning property, to what country in Europe did not the progress of their fury furnish just cause of alarm?
* Speech of M. Camus, published by order of the National Assembly.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 435
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 assiduity 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 fanaticism. They have societies to cabal
and correspond at home and abroad for the propagation of their 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 destruction of which they aim. I am told they
have in some measure succeeded in sowing there the
* Whether the following description is strictly true I 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 rdsiste' a toutes les seductions du bigotisme, aux persecutions et aux tracasseries des ennemis de la Rdvolution. Oubliant leurs plus grands interets pour rendre hommage aux vues d'ordre general qui ont determine l'Assemblde Nationale, ils
voient, sans se plaindre, supprimer cette foule d'etablissemens eccldsiastiques par lesquels ils subsistoient; et meme, en perdant leur siege episcopal, la seule de toutes ces ressources qui pouvoit, ou pluntt qui
devoit, en toute equite, leur etre conservee, condamnes t la plus effra
? ? ? ? 436 REFLECTIONS ON THE
seeds of discontent. They are busy throughout Germany. Spain and Italy have not been untried. England is not left out of the comprehensive scheme of
their malignant charity: and in England we find
those who stretch out their arms to them, who recommend their example from more than one pulpit,
and who choose, in more than one periodical meeting,
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 perpetual 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 property
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 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 reyante misere sans avoir tt6 ni pu etre entendus, ils ne murmurent point, ils
restent fideles aux principes du plus pur patriotisme; ils sont encore
prkts a verser leur sang pour le maintien de la constitution, qui va reduire leur ville az la plus deplorable nullitJ. " - 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 have been always
free; their patience in beggary 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 great
multitude all over France is in the same condition and the same
temper.
* See the proceedings of the confederation at Nantes.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 437
gard 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 governments
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 by the efforts of the most dangerous of all parties: I mean an
extensive, discontented moneyed interest, injured and
not destroyed. The men who compose this interest
look for their security, in the first instance, to the
fidelity of government; in the second, to its power.
If they find the old governments effete, worn out, and
with their springs relaxed, so as not to be of sufficient
vigor for their purposes, they may seek new ones
* " Si plures sunt ii quibus improbe datum est, quam illi quibus
injuste ademptum est, idcirco plus etiam valent? Non enim numero hbec judicantur, sed pondere. Quam autem habet sequitatem, ut
agrum multis annis, aut etiamn sseculis ante possessum, qui nullum
habuit habeat, qui autem habuit amittat? Ac, propter hoc injuries
genus, Lacedsemonii Lysandrum Ephorum expulerunt; Agin regem
(quod nunquam antea apud eos acciderat) necaverunt; exque eo tempore tantse discordise secutse sunt, ut et tyranni exsisterent, et optimates exterminarentur, et preclarissime constituta respublica dilaberetur. Nec vero solum ipsa cecidit, sed etiam reliquam Grseciam evertit contagionibus malorum, quse a Lacedsemoniis profects mana.
runt latius. " --After speaking of the conduct of the model of true
patriots, Aratus of Sicyon, which was in a very different spirit, he
says, -" Sic par est agere cum civibus; non (ut bis jam vidimus)
hastam in foro ponere et bona civium voci subjicere proeconis. At ille
Groecus (id quod fuit sapientis et proestantis viri) omnibus consulendum esse putavit: eaque est summa ratio et sapientia boni civis,
commoda civium non divellere, sed omnes eadem oequitate continere. "
-Cic. Off. 1. 2.
? ? ? ? 438 REFLECTIONS ON THE
that shall be possessed of more energy; and this energy will be derived, not from an acquisition of resources, but from a contempt of justice. Revolutions
are favorable to confiscation; and it is impossible to
know under what obnoxious names the next confiscations will be authorized. I am sure that the principles predominant 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 inutility; 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 extraordinary 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 m'ost 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
with the greatest difficulty that I am able to separate
policy from justice. Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent depart* See two books entitled, "Einige Originalschriften des Illuminatenordens," --" System und Folgen des Illuminatenordens. " Minchen, 1787.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 439
ure from it, under any circumstances, 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 departure 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 honor. 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 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
? ? ? ? 440 REFLECTIONS ON THE
be destroyed without notably impairing 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 unreformed existence. Spartam nactus 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 conceive 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 scribble whatever he pleases. A man
full of warm, speculative 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. Everything 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 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; and if he finds 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
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 441
to public purposes, without any other than public ties
and public principles, - 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 honor, and implicit obedience stands
in the place of freedom. In vain shall a man look to
the possibility 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 couny
try. 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 of the human mind is almost tantamount, in
the moral world, to the destruction of the apparently
active properties of bodies in the material. It would
be like the attempt to destroy (if it were in our competence to destroy) the expansive force of fixed air in
nitre, or the power of steam, or of electricity, or of
magnetism. These energies always existed in Na
? ? ? ? 442 REFLECTIONS ON THE
ture, and they were always discernible. They seemed,
some of them unserviceable, some noxious, some no
better than a sport to children, - until contemplative
ability, combining with practic skill, tamed their wild
nature, subdued them to use, and rendered them at
once the most powerful and the most tractable agents,
in subservience to the great views and designs of men.
Did fifty thousand persons, whose mental and whose
bodily labor you might direct, and so many hundred
thousand a year of a revenue, which was neither lazy
nor superstitious, appear too big for your abilities to
wield? Had you no way of using the men, but by
converting monks into pensioners? Had you no way
of turning the revenue to account, but through the
improvident resource of a spendthrift sale? If you
were thus destitute of mental funds, the proceeding
is in its natural course. Your politicians do not
understand their trade; and therefore they sell their
tools.
But the institutions savor of superstition in their
very principle; and they nourish it by a permanent
and standing influence. - This I do not mean to dispute; but this ought not to hinder you from deriving from superstition itself any resources which may thence be furnished for the public advantage. You
derive benefits from many dispositions and many passions of the human mind which are of as doubtful
a color, in the moral eye, as superstition itself. It
was your business to correct and mitigate everything
which was noxious in this passion, as in all the passions. But is superstition the greatest of all possible vices? In its possible excess I think it becomes
a very great evil. It is, however, a moral subject,
and of course admits of all degrees and all modifica
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 443
tions. Superstition is the religion of feeble minds;
and they must be tolerated in an intermixture of it,
in some triflin',_ te. nhli _. shaAe or others
else you will deprive weak minds of a resource found
necessary to the strigest. The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will
of the Sovereign of the world, in a confidence in
His declarations, and in imitation of His perfections.
The rest is our own. It may be prejudicial to the
great end, - it may be auxiliary. Wise men, who, as
such, are not admirers, (not admirers at least of the
munera terrce,) are not violently attached to these
things, nor do they violently hate them. Wisdom
is not the most severe corrector of folly. They are
the rival follies which mutually wage so unrelenting
a war, and which make so cruel a use of their advantages, as they can happen to engage the immoderate vulgar, on the one side or the other, in their quarrels. Prudence would be neuter; but if, in the
contention between fond attachment and fierce antipathy concerning things in their nature not made to
produce such heats, a prudent man were obliged to
make a choice of what errors and excesses of enthusiasm he would condemn or bear, perhaps he would
think the superstition which builds to be more tolerable than that which demolishes, -- that which
adorns a country, than that which deforms it, - that
which endows, than that which plunders, - that
which disposes to mistaken beneficence, than that
which stimulates to real injustice,- that which leads
a man to refuse to himself lawful pleasures, than that
which snatches from others the scanty subsistence of
their self-denial. Such, I think, is very nearly the
state of the question between the' ancient founders
? ? ? ? 444 REFLECTIONS ON THE
of monkish superstition and the superstition of the
pretended philosophers of the hour.
For the present I postpone all consideration of the
supposed public profit of the sale, which, however, I
conceive to be perfectly delusive. I shall here only
consider it as a transfer of property. On the policy of that transfer I shall trouble you with a few
thoughts.
In every prosperous community something more is
produced than goes to the immediate support of the
producer. This surplus forms the income of the
landed capitalist. It will be spent by a proprietor
who does not labor. But this idleness is itself the
spring of labor, this repose the spur to industry.
The only concern for the state is, that the capital
taken in rent from the land should be returned
again to the industry from whence it came, and
that its expenditure should be with the least possible
detriment to the morals of those who expend it and
to those of the people to whom it is returned.
In all the views of receipt, expenditure, and personal employment, a soberJlegislator would cartltJ compare the pos se -oer. whom he was. . xrec Aed
to expel with the stranger who was proposed to fill
his place. Before the inconveniences are incurred
which must attend all violent revolutions in property through extensive confiscation, we ought to have some rational assurance that the purchasers of the
confiscated property will be in a considerable degree
more laborious, more virtuous, more sober, less disposed to extort an unreasonable proportion of the gains of the laborer, or to consume on themselves a
larger share than is fit for the measure of an individual, --or that they should be qualified to dispense the
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 445
surplus in a more steady and equal mode, so as to
answer the purposes of a politic expenditure, than
the old possessors, call those possessors bishops, or
canons, or commendatory abbots, or monks, or what
you please. The monks are lazy. Be it so. Suppose them no otherwise employed than by singing in
the choir. They are as usefully employed as those
who neither sing nor say, --as usefully even as those
who sing upon the stage. They are as usefully employed as if they worked from dawn to dark in the
innumerable servile, degrading, unseemly, unmanly,
and often most unwholesome and pestiferous occupations to which by the social economy so many
wretches are inevitably doomed. If it were not generally pernicious to disturb the natural course of
things, and to impede in any degree the great wheel
of circulation which is turned by the strangely directed labor of these unhappy people, I should be infinitely more inclined forcibly to rescue them from their miserable industry than violently to disturb the tranquil repose of monastic quietude. Humanity, and
perhaps policy, might better justify me in the one
than in the other. It is a subject on which I have
often reflected, and never reflected without feeling
from it. I am sure that no consideration, except
the necessity of submitting to the yoke of luxury
and the despotism of fancy, who in their own imperious way will distribute the surplus product of the
soil, can justify the toleration of such trades and
employments in a well-regulated state. But for this
purpose of distribution, it seems to me that the idle
expenses of monks are quite as well directed as the
idle expenses of us lay loiterers.
When the advantages of the possession and of the
? ? ? ? 446 REFLECTIONS ON THE
project are on a par, there is no motive for a change.
But in the present case, perhaps, they are not upon a
par, and the difference is in favor of the possession.
It does not appear to me that the expenses of those
whom you are going to expel do in fact take a
course so directly and so generally leading to vitiate
and degrade and render miserable those through
whom they pass as the expenses of those favorites
whom you are intruding into their houses. Why
should the expenditure of a great landed property,
which is a dispersion of the surplus product of the
soil, appear intolerable to you or to me, when it takes
its course through the accumulation of vast libraries,
which are the history of the force and weakness of
the human mind,- through great collections of ancient records, medals, and coins, which attest and
explain laws and customs, -through paintings and
statues, that, by imitating Nature, seem to extend the
limits of creation, -through grand monuments of the
dead, which continue the regards and connections of
life beyond the grave, - through collections of the
specimens of Nature, which become a representative
assembly of all the classes and families of the world,
that by disposi. tion facilitate, and by exciting curiosity open, the avenues to science? If by great permanent establishments all these objects of expense are better secured from the inconstant sport of personal
caprice and personal extravagance, are they worse
than if the same tastes prevailed in scattered individuals? Does not the sweat of the mason and carpenter, who toil in order to partake the sweat of the peasant, flow as pleasantly and as salubriously in the
construction and repair of the majestic edifices of religion as in the painted booths and sordid sties of
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vice and luxury? as honorably and as profitably in
repairing those sacred works which grow hoary with
innumerable years as on the momentary receptacles
of transient voluptuousness, --in opera-houses, and
brothels, and gaming-houses, and club-houses, and
obelisks in the Champ de Mars? Is the surplus
product of the olive and the vine worse employed in
the frugal sustenance of persons whom the fictions
of a pious imagination raise to dignity by construing
in the service of God than in pampering the innumerable multitude of those who are degraded by being made useless domestics, subservient to the pride of man? Are the decorations of temples an expenditure less worthy a wise man than ribbons, and laces,
and national cockades, and petit maisons, and petit
soupers, and all the innumerable fopperies and follies
in which opulence sports away the burden of its superfluity?
We tolerate even these,- not from love of them,
but for fear of worse. We tolerate them, because
property and liberty, to a degree, require that toleration. But why proscribe the other, and surely, in
every point of view, the more laudable use of estates?
Why, through the violation of all property, through
an outrage upon every principle of liberty, forcibly
carry them from the better to the worse?
This comparison between the new individuals and
the old corps is made upon a supposition that no reform could be made in the latter. But, in a question
of reformation, I always consider corporate bodies,
whether sole or consisting of many, to be much more
susceptible of a public direction, by the power of the
state, in the use of their property, and in the regulation of modes and habits of life in their members,
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than private citizens ever can be, or perhaps ought to
be; and this seems to me a very material consideration for those who undertake anything which merits
the name of a politic enterprise. - So far as to the
estates of monasteries.
With regard to the estates possessed by bishops
and canons and commendatory abbots, I cannot find
out for what reason some landed estates may not be
held otherwise than by inheritance. Can any philosophic spoiler undertake to demonstrate the positive
or the comparative evil of having a certain, and that,
too, a large, portion of landed property passing in succession through persons whose title to it is, always in theory and often in fact, an eminent degree of piety,
morals, and learning; a property which by its destination, in their turn, and on the score of merit, gives
to the noblest families renovation and support, to the
lowest the means of dignity and elevation; a property, the tenure of which is the performance of some duty, (whatever value you may choose to set upon
that duty,) and the character of whose proprietors
demands at least an exterior decorum and gravity of
manners, -- who are to exercise a generous, but temperate hospitality, --part of whose income they are to consider as a trust for charity,-and who, even when
they fail in their trust, when they slide from their
character, and degenerate into a mere common secular
nobleman or gentleman, are in no respect worse than
those who may succeed them in their forfeited possessions? Is it better that estates should be held by those who have no duty than by those who have one?
by those whose character and destination point to
virtues than by those who have no rule and direction
in the expenditure of their estates but their own will
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 449
aind appetite? Nor are these estates held altogether
in the character or with the evils supposed inherent
in mortmain. They pass from hand to hand with a
more rapid circulation than any other. No excess is
good, and therefore too great a proportion of landed
property may be held officially for life; but it does
not seem to me of material injury to any common
wealth that there should exist some estates that have
a chance of being acquired by other means than the
previous acquisition of money.
This letter is grown to a great length, though it
is, indeed, short with regard to the infinite extent of
the subject. Various avocations have from time to;,
time called my mind from the subject. I was not
sorry to give myself leisure to observe whether in
the proceedings of the National Assembly I might
not find reasons to change or to qualify some of my
first sentiments. Everything has confirmed me more
strongly in my'first opinions. It was my original
purpose to take a view of the principles of the National Assembly with regard to the great and fundamental establishments, and to compare the whole of what you have substituted in the place of what you
have destroyed with the several members of our British Constitution. But this plan is of greater extent,
than at first I computed, and I find that you have
little desire to take the advantage of any examples.
At present I must content myself with some remarks
upon your establishments, reserving for another time
what I proposed to say concerning the spirit of our
British monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, as practically they exist.
I have taken a view of what has been done by the
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governing power ill France. I have certainly spoke
of it with freedom. Those whose principle it is to
despise the ancient, permanent sense of mankind,
and to set up a scheme of society on new principles,
must naturally expect that such of us who think
better of the judgment of the human race than of
theirs should consider both them and their devices
as men and schemes upon their trial. They must
take it for granted. that we attend much to their reason, but not at all to their authority. They have
not one of the great influencing prejudices of mankind inll their favor. They avow their hostility to
opinion. Of course they must expect no support
from that influence, which, with every other authority, they have deposed from the seat of its jurisdiction. I can never consider this Assembly as anything
else than a voluntary association of men who have
availe' themselves of circumstances to seize upon the
1poer of tile state. They have not'the sanctioe and
authority of the character under which they first
met. They have assumed another of a very different nature, and have completely altered and inverted
all the relations in which they originally stood. They
do not hold the authority they exercise under any
constitutional law of the state. They have departed
from the instructions of the people by whom they
were sent; which instructions, as the Assembly'did
not act in virtue of any ancient usage qr settled law,
were the sole source of their authority. The most
considerable of their acts have not been done by great
majorities; and in this sort of near divisions, which
carry only the constructive authority of the whole,
strangers will consider reasons as well as resolutions.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 451
If they had set up this new, experimental government as a necessary substitute for an expelled tyranny, mankind would anticipate the time of prescription, which through long usage mellows into legality governments that were violent in their commencement. All those who have affections which lead
them to the conservation of civil order would recognize, even in its cradle, the child as legitimate,
which has been produced from those principles of
cogent expediency to which all just governments owe
their birth, and on which they justify their continuance. But they will be late and reluctant in giving
any sort of countenance to the operations of a power
which has derived its birth from no law and no necessity, but which, on the contrary, has had its origin
in those vices and sinister practices by which the social union is often disturbed and sometimes destroyed.
This Assembly has hardly a year's prescription. We
have their own word for it that they have made a
revolution. To make a revolution is a measure
which, primd fronte, requires ail apology. To make
a revolution is to subvert the ancient state of our
country; and no common reasons are called for to
justify so violent a proceeding. The sense of man
kind authorizes us to examine into the mode of acquiring new power, and to criticize on the use that
is made of it, with less awe and reverence than that
which is usually conceded to a settled and recognized
authority.
In obtaining and securing their power, the Assembly proceeds upon principles the most opposite from
those which appear to direct them in the use of it.
An observation on this difference will let us into the
true spirit of their conduct. Everything which they
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have done, or continue to do, in order to obtain and
keep their power, is by the most common arts. They
proceed exactly as their ancestors of ambition have
done before them. Trace them through all their artifices, frauds, and violences, you can find nothing
at all that is new'. They follow precedents and examples with the punctilious exactness of a pleader.
They never depart an iota from the authentic formulas of tyranny and usurpation. But in all the regulations relative to the public good the spirit has been the very reverse of this. There they commit the
whole to the mercy of untried speculations; they
abandon the dearest interests of the public to,those
loose theories to which none of them would choose
to trust the slightest of his private concerns. They
make this difference, because in their desire of obtaining and securing power they are thoroughly in
earnest; there they travel in the beaten road. The
public interests, because about them they have no
real solicitude, they abandon wholly to chance: I
say to chance2 because their schemes have nothing
in experience to prove their tendency beneficial.
We must always see with a pity not unmixed with
respect the errors of those who are timid and doubtftil of themselves with regard to points wherein the
happiness of mankind is concerned. But in these
gentlemen there is nothing of the tender parental
solicitude which fears to cut up the infant for the
sake of an experiment. In the vastness of their
promises and the confidence of their predictions they
far outdo all the boasting of empirics. The arrogance of their pretensions in a manner provokes
and challenges us to an inquiry into their foundation.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 453
I am convinced that there are men of considerable
parts among the popular leaders in the National Assembly. Some of them display eloquence in their speeches and their writings. This cannot be without powerful and cultivated talents. But eloquence
may exist without a proportionable degree of wisdom.
When I speak of ability, I am obliged to distinguish.
What they have done towards the support of their
system bespeaks no ordinary men. In the system
itself, taken as the scheme of a republic constructed for procuring the prosperity and security of the citizen, and for promoting the strength and grandeur of the state, I confess myself unable to find out anything which displays, in a single instance, the
work of a comprehensive and disposing mind, or even
the provisions of a vulgar prudence. Their purpose
everywhere seems to have been to evade and slip
aside from difflculty. This it has been the glory of
the great masters in all the arts to confront, and to
overcome, - and when they had overcome the first
difficulty, to turn it into an instrument for new conquests over new difficulties: thus to enable them to extend the empire of their science, and even to push
forward, beyond the reach of their original thoughts,
the landmarks of the human understanding itself.
Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the
supreme ordinance of a parental Guardian and Legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as He loves us better too. Pater ipse colendi haud
facilem esse viam voluit. He that wrestles with us
strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our
antagonist is our helper. This amicable conflict with
difficulty obliges us to an intimate acquaintance with
our object, and compels us to consider it in all its re
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lations. It will not suffer us to be superficial. It is
the want of nerves of understanding for such a task,
it is the degenerate fondness for tricking short-cuts
and little fallacious facilities, that has in so many
parts of the world created governments with arbitrary powers. They have created the late arbitrary
monarchy of France. They have created the arbitrary republic of Paris. With them defects in wisdom are to be supplied by the pl! Qe)itude of force.
They get nothing by it. Commencing their labors
on a principle of sloth, they have the common fortune of slothful men. The difficulties, which they
rather had eluded than escaped, meet them again in
their course; they multiply and thicken on them;
they are involved, through a labyrinth of confused
detail, in an industry without limit and without direction; and in conclusion, the whole of their work
becomes feeble, vicious, and insecure.
It is this inability to wrestle with difficulty which
has obliged the arbitrary Assemnbly of France to commence their schemes of reform with abolition and
total destrnction.