They succeeded in
destroying
that form; and
atheism has succeeded in destroying them.
atheism has succeeded in destroying them.
Edmund Burke
?
?
?
REVOLUTION IN FRANCE.
417
frequently revised. But I saw no crimes in the individuals that merited confiscation of their substance,
nor those cruel insults and degradations, and that
unnatural persecution, which have been substituted
in the place of meliorating regulation.
If there had been any just cause for this new religious persecution, the atheistic libellers, who act as
trumpeters to animate the populace to plunder, do
not love anybody so much as not to dwell with- complacence on the vices of the existing clergy. This
they have not done. They find themselves obliged
to rake into the histories of former ages (which they
have ransacked with a malignant and profligate industry) for every instance of oppression and persecution which has been made by that body or in its favor, in order to justify, upon very iniquitous because very
illogical principles of retaliation, their own persecu --
tions and their own cruelties. After destroying all,
other genealogies and family distinctions, they invent
a sort of pedigree of crimes. It is not very just to
chastise men for the offences of their natural ancestors; but to take the fiction of ancestry in a corporate
succession, as a ground for punishing men who have
no relation to guilty acts, except in names and general descriptions, is a sort of refinement in injustice
belonging to the philosophy of this enlightened age.
The Assembly punishes men, many, if not most, of
whom abhor the violent conduct of ecclesiastics in
former times as much as their present persecutors
can do, and who would be as loud and as strong in
the expression of that sense, if they were not well
aware of the purposes for which all this declamation
is employed.
Corporate bodies are immortal for the good of the
VOL. III. 27
? ? ? ? 418 REFLECTIONS ON THE
members, but not for their punishment. Nations
themselves are such corporations. As well might we
in England think of waging inexpiable war upon all
Frenchmen for the evils which they have brought
upon us in the several periods of our mutual hostilities. You might, on your part, think yourselves justified ill falling upon all Englishmen on account of the unparalleled calamities brought upon the people
of France by the unjust invasions of our Henrys and
our Edwards. Indeed, we should be mutually justified in this exterminatory war upon each other, full
as much as you are in the unprovoked persecution of
your present countrymen, on account of the conduct
of men of the same name in other times.
We do not draw the moral lessons we might from
history. Oin the contrary, without care it may be
used to vitiate our minds and to destroy our happiness. In history a great volume is unrolled for our
instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom
from the past errors and infirmities of mankind. It
may, in the perversion, serve for a' magazine, furnishing offensive and defensive weapons for parties in
Church and State, and supplying the means of keeping alive or reviving dissensions and animosities, and
adding fuel to civil fury. History consists, for the
greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world
by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition,
hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetites, which shake the public with the same
"troublous storms that toss
The private state, and render life unsweet. "
These vices are the causes of those storms. Religion,
morals, laws, prerogatives, privileges, liberties, rights
of men, are the pretexts. The pretexts are always
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 419
found in some specious appearance of a real good.
You would not secure men from tyranny and sedition by rooting out of the mind the principles to
which these fraudulent pretexts apply? If you did,
you would root out everything that is valuable in the
human breast. As these are the pretexts, so the ordinary actors and instruments in great public evils are kings, priests, magistrates, senates, parliaments,
national assemblies, judges, and captains. You would
not cure the evil by resolving that there should be
no more monarchs, nor ministers of state, nor of the
Gospel, --no interpreters of law, no general officers,
no public councils. You might change the names:
the things in some shape must remain. A certain
quantum of power must always exist in the community, in some hands, and under some appellation. Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to
names, - to the causes of evil, which are permanent,
not to the occasional organs by which they act, and
the transitory modes in which they appear. Otherwise you will be wise historically, a fool in practice. Seldom have two ages the same fashion in their pretexts, and the same modes of mischief. Wickedness is a little more inventive. Whilst you are discussing
fashion, the fashion is gone by. The very same vice
assumes a new body. The spirit transmigrates; and,
far from losing its principle of life by the change of
its appearance, it is renovated in its new organs with
the fresh vigor of a juvenile activity. It walks abroad,
it continues its ravages, whilst you are gibbeting the
carcass or demolishing the tomb. You are terrifying yourselves with ghosts and apparitions, whilst
your house is the haunt of robbers. It is thus with
all those who, attending only to the shell and husk
? ? ? ? 420 REFLECTIONS ON THE
of history, think they are waging war with intolerance, pride, and cruelty, whilst, under color of abhorring the ill princples of antiquated parties, they are authorizing and feeding the same odious vices in different factions, and perhaps in worse.
Your citizens of Paris formerly had lent themselves as the ready instruments to slaughter the followers of Calvin, at the infamous massacre of St. Bartholomew. What should we say to those who
could think of retaliating on the Parisians of this day
the abominations and horrors of that time? They are,
indeed, brought to abhor that massacre. Ferocious as
they are, it is not difficult to make them dislike it,
because the politicians and fashionable teachers have
no interest in giving their passions exactly the same
direction. Still, however, they find it their interest to
keep the same savage dispositions alive. It was but
the other day that they caused this very massacre to
be acted on the stage for the diversion of the descendants of those who committed it. In this tragic farce
they produced the Cardinal of Lorraine' in his robes
of function, ordering general slaughter. Was this
spectacle intended to make the Parisians abhor persecution and loathe the effusion of blood? No: it
was to teach them to persecute their own pastors; it
was to excite them, by raising a disgust and horror
of their clergy, to an alacrity in hunting down to destruction an order which, if it ought to exist at all,
ought to exist not only in safety, but in reverence.
It was to stimulate their cannibal appetites (which
one would think had been gorged sufficiently) by
variety and seasoning, -- and to quicken them to an
alertness in new murders and massacres, if it should
suit the purpose of the Guises of the day. An As
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 421
sembly in which sat a multitude of priests and prelates was obliged to suffer this indignity at its door. The author was not sent to the galleys, nor the players to the house of correction. Not long after this exhibition, those players came forward to the Assembly to claim the rites of that very religion which they had dared to expose, and to show their prostituted
faces in the senate, whilst the Archbishop of Paris,
whose function was known to his people only by his
prayers and benedictions, and his wealth only by
alms, is forced to abandon his house, and to fly from
his flock, (as from ravenous wolves,) because, truly,
in the sixteenth century, the Cardinal of Lorraine
was a rebel and a murderer. *
Such is the effect of the perversion of history by
those who, for the same nefarious purposes, have
perverted every other part of learning. But those
who will stand upon that elevation of reason which
places centuries under our eye and brings things to
the true point of comparison, which obscures little
names and effaces the colors of little parties, and to
which nothing can ascend but the spirit and moral
quality of human actions, will say to the teachers
of the Palais Royal, -- The Cardinal of Lorraine was
the murderer of the sixteenth century; you have the
glory of being the murderers in the eighteenth; and
this is the only difference between you. But history in the nineteenth century, better understood aind better employed, will, I trust, teach a civilized posterity to abhor the misdeeds of both these barbarous ages. It will teach future priests and magistrates
not to retaliate upon the speculative and inactive
* This is on a supposition of the truth of this story; but he'was
not in France at the time. One name serves as well as another.
? ? ? ? 422 REFLECTIONS ON THE
atheists of future times the enormities committed by
the present practical zealots and furious fanatics of
that wretched error, which, in its quiescent state, is
more than punished, whenever it is embraced. It
will teach posterity not to make war upon either
religion or pl! ilosophy for tile'abuse which the hypocrites of both have made of the two most valuable
blessings conferred upon us by the bounty of the universal Patron, who in all things eminently favors and
protects the race of man.
If your clergy, or any clergy, should show themselves vicious beyond the fair bounds allowed to human infirmity, and to those professional faults which
can hardly be separated from professional virtues,
though their vices never can countenance the exercise of. oppression, I do admit that they would naturally have the effect of abating very much of our indignation against the tyrants who exceed measure and justice in their punishment. I can allow in clergymen, through all their divisions, some tenaciousness of their own opinion, some overflowings of zeal
for its propagation, some predilection to their own
state and office, some attachment to the interest of
their own corps, some preference to those who listen with docility to their doctrines beyond those who
scorn and deride them. I allow all this, because
I am a man who have to deal with men, and who
would not, through a violence of toleration, run into the greatest of all intolerance. I must bear with
infirmities, until they fester into crimes.
Undoubtedly, the natural progress of the passions,
from frailty to vice, ought to be prevented by a
watchful eye and a firm hand. But is it true that
the body of your clergy had passed those limits of a
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 423
just allowance? From the general style of your late
publications of all sorts, one would be led to believe
that your clergy in France were a sort of monsters:
an horrible composition of superstition, ignorance,
sloth, fraud, avarice, and tyranny. But is this true?
Is it true that the lapse of time, the cessation of conflicting interests,'the woful experience of the evils resulting from party rage, have had no sort of influence gradually to meliorate their minds? Is it true that they were daily renewing invasions on the civil
power, troubling the domestic quiet of their country,
and rendering the operations of its government feeble and precarious? Is it true that the clergy of our times have pressed down the laity with an iron hand,
and were in all places lighting up the fires of a
savage persecution? Did they by every fraud endeavor to increase their estates? Did they use to exceed the due demands on estates that were their
own? Or, rigidly screwing up right into wrong, did
they convert a legal claim into a vexatious extortion? When not possessed of power, were they filled with the vices of those who envy it? Were they
inflamed with a violent, litigious spirit of controversy? Goaded on with the ambition of intellectual sovereignty, were they ready to fly in the face of all
magistracy, to fire churches, to massacre the priests
of other descriptions, to pull down altars, and to
make their way over the ruins of subverted goveri.
ments to an empire of doctrine, sometimes flattering,
sometimes forcing, the consciences of men from the
jurisdiction of public institutions into a submission
to their personal authority, beginning with a claim
of liberty and ending with an abuse of power?
These, orI some of these, were the vices objected,
? ? ? ? 424 REFLECTIONS ON THE
and not wholly without foundation, to several of the
churchmen of former times, who belonged to the two
great parties which then divided and distracted Europe.
If there was in France, as in other countries there
visibly is, a great abatement, rather than any increase of these vices, instead of loading the present
clergy with the crimes of other men and the odious
character of other times, in common equity they
ought to be praised, encouraged, and supported, in
their departure from a spirit which disgraced their
predecessors, and for having assumed a temper of
mind and manners more suitable to their sacred
function.
When my occasions took me into France, towards
the close of the late reign, the clergy, under all their
forms, engaged a considerable part of my curiosity.
So far from finding (except from one set of men, not
then very numerous, though very active) the complaints and discontents against that body which some
publications had given me reason to expect, I perceived little or no public or private uneasiness on their
account. On further examination, I found the clergy, in general, persons of moderate minds and decorous manners: I include the seculars, and the regulars of both sexes. I had not the good fortune to know a great many of the parochial clergy: but in
general I received a perfectly good account of their
morals, and of their attention to their duties. With
some of the higher clergy I had a personal acquaintance, and of the rest in that class a very good means
of information. They were almost all of them persons of noble birth. They resembled others of their
own rank; and where there was ally difference, it was
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 425
in their favor. They were more fully educated than
the military noblesse, --so as by no means to disgrace
their profession by ignorance, or by want of fitness for
the exercise of their authority. They seemed to me,
beyond the clerical character, liberal and open, with
the hearts of gentlemen and men of honor, neither
insolent nor servile in their manners and conduct.
They seemed to me rather a superior class, a set of
men amongst whom you would not be surprised to
find a F4nelon. I saw among the clergy in Paris
(many of the description are not to be met with anywhere) men of great learning and candor; and I had
reason to believe that this description was not confined
to Paris. What I found in other places I know was
accidental, and therefore to be presumed a fair sample. I spent a few days in a provincial town, where,
in the absence of the bishop, I passed my evenings
with three clergymen, his vicars-general, persons who
would have done honor to any church. They were
all well-informed; two of them of deep, general, and
extensive erudition, ancient and modern, Oriental and
Western,- particularly in their own profession. They
had a more extensive knowledge of our English divines than I expected; and they entered into the
genius of those writers with a critical accuracy. One
of these gentlemen is since dead: the Abbe Morangis.
I pay this tribute without reluctance to the memory
of that noble, reverend, learned, and excellent person; and I should do the same with equal cheerfulnless to the merits of the others, who I believe are still living, if I did not fear to hurt those whom I am
unable to serve.
Some of these ecclesiastics of rank are, by all
titles, persons deserving of general respect. They
? ? ? ? 426 REFLECTIONS ON THE
are deserving of gratitude from me, and from many
English. If this letter should ever come into their
hands, I hope they will believe there are those of our
nation who feel for their unmerited fall, and for the
cruel confiscation of their fortunes, with no common
sensibility. What I say of them is a testimony, as
far as one feeble voice can go, which I owe to truth.
Whenever the question of this unnatural persecution
is concerned, I will pay it. No one shall prevent me
from being just and grateful. The time is fitted for
the duty; and it is particularly becoming to show
our justice and gratitude, when those who have
deserved well of us and of mankind are laboring
under popular obloquy and the persecutions of oppressive power.
You had before your Revolution about a hundred
and twenty bishops. A few of them were men of
eminent sanctity, and charity without limit. When
we talk of the heroic, of course we talk of rare virtue.
I believe the instances of eminent depravity may be
as rare amongst them as those of transcendent goodness. Examples of avarice and of licentiousness may
be picked out, I do not question it, by those who
delight in the investigation which leads to such discoveries. A man as old as I am will not be astonished that several, in every description, do not lead that perfect life of self-denial, with regard to wealth
or to pleasure, which is wished for by all, by some
expected, but by none exacted with more rigor than
by those who are the most attentive to ti eir own interests or the most indulgent to their own passions.
When I was in France, I am certain that the'number
of vicious prelates was not great. Certain individuals
among them, not distinguishable for the regularity of
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 427
their lives, made some amends %or their want of the
severe virtues in their possession of the liberal, and
were endowed with qualities which made them useful
in the Church and State. I am told, that, with few
exceptions, Louis the Sixteenth had been more atten
tive to character, in his promotions to that rank, than,
his immediate predecessor; and I believe (as some
spirit of reform has prevailed through the whole
reign) that it may be true. But the present ruling
power has shown a disposition only to plunder the
Church. It has punished all prelates: which is to
favor the vicious, at least in point of reputation. It
has made a degrading pensionary establishment, to
which no man of liberal ideas or liberal condition
will destine his children. It must settle into the
lowest classes of the people. As with you the inferior clergy are not numerous enough for their duties,
as these duties are beyond measure minute and toilsome, as you have left no middle classes of clergy at their ease, in future nothing of science or erudition
can exist in the Gallican Church. To complete the
project, without the least attention to the rights of
patrons, the Assembly has provided in future an elective clergy: an arrangement which will drive out of the clerical profession all men of sobriety, all who
can pretend to independence in their function or
their conduct, -and which will throw the whole direction of the public mind into the hands of a set of licentious, bold, crafty, factious, flattering wretches,
of such condition and such habits of life as will make
their contemptible -pensions (in comparison of which
the stipend of an exciseman is lucrative and honorable) an object of low and illiberal intrigue. Those officers whom they still call bishops are to be elected
? ? ? ? 428 REFLECTIONS ON THE
to a provision comparatively mean, through the same
arts, (that is, electioneering arts,) by men of all religious tenets that are known or can be invented.
The new lawgivers have not ascertained anything
whatsoever concerning their qualifications, relative
either to doctrine or to morals, no more than they
have done with regard to the subordinate clergy; nor
does it appear but that both the higher and the lower
may, at their discretion, practise or preach any mode
of religion or irreligion that they please. I do not
yet see what the jurisdiction of bishops over their
subordinates is to be, or whether they are to have
any jurisdiction at all.
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.
frequently revised. But I saw no crimes in the individuals that merited confiscation of their substance,
nor those cruel insults and degradations, and that
unnatural persecution, which have been substituted
in the place of meliorating regulation.
If there had been any just cause for this new religious persecution, the atheistic libellers, who act as
trumpeters to animate the populace to plunder, do
not love anybody so much as not to dwell with- complacence on the vices of the existing clergy. This
they have not done. They find themselves obliged
to rake into the histories of former ages (which they
have ransacked with a malignant and profligate industry) for every instance of oppression and persecution which has been made by that body or in its favor, in order to justify, upon very iniquitous because very
illogical principles of retaliation, their own persecu --
tions and their own cruelties. After destroying all,
other genealogies and family distinctions, they invent
a sort of pedigree of crimes. It is not very just to
chastise men for the offences of their natural ancestors; but to take the fiction of ancestry in a corporate
succession, as a ground for punishing men who have
no relation to guilty acts, except in names and general descriptions, is a sort of refinement in injustice
belonging to the philosophy of this enlightened age.
The Assembly punishes men, many, if not most, of
whom abhor the violent conduct of ecclesiastics in
former times as much as their present persecutors
can do, and who would be as loud and as strong in
the expression of that sense, if they were not well
aware of the purposes for which all this declamation
is employed.
Corporate bodies are immortal for the good of the
VOL. III. 27
? ? ? ? 418 REFLECTIONS ON THE
members, but not for their punishment. Nations
themselves are such corporations. As well might we
in England think of waging inexpiable war upon all
Frenchmen for the evils which they have brought
upon us in the several periods of our mutual hostilities. You might, on your part, think yourselves justified ill falling upon all Englishmen on account of the unparalleled calamities brought upon the people
of France by the unjust invasions of our Henrys and
our Edwards. Indeed, we should be mutually justified in this exterminatory war upon each other, full
as much as you are in the unprovoked persecution of
your present countrymen, on account of the conduct
of men of the same name in other times.
We do not draw the moral lessons we might from
history. Oin the contrary, without care it may be
used to vitiate our minds and to destroy our happiness. In history a great volume is unrolled for our
instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom
from the past errors and infirmities of mankind. It
may, in the perversion, serve for a' magazine, furnishing offensive and defensive weapons for parties in
Church and State, and supplying the means of keeping alive or reviving dissensions and animosities, and
adding fuel to civil fury. History consists, for the
greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world
by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition,
hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetites, which shake the public with the same
"troublous storms that toss
The private state, and render life unsweet. "
These vices are the causes of those storms. Religion,
morals, laws, prerogatives, privileges, liberties, rights
of men, are the pretexts. The pretexts are always
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 419
found in some specious appearance of a real good.
You would not secure men from tyranny and sedition by rooting out of the mind the principles to
which these fraudulent pretexts apply? If you did,
you would root out everything that is valuable in the
human breast. As these are the pretexts, so the ordinary actors and instruments in great public evils are kings, priests, magistrates, senates, parliaments,
national assemblies, judges, and captains. You would
not cure the evil by resolving that there should be
no more monarchs, nor ministers of state, nor of the
Gospel, --no interpreters of law, no general officers,
no public councils. You might change the names:
the things in some shape must remain. A certain
quantum of power must always exist in the community, in some hands, and under some appellation. Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to
names, - to the causes of evil, which are permanent,
not to the occasional organs by which they act, and
the transitory modes in which they appear. Otherwise you will be wise historically, a fool in practice. Seldom have two ages the same fashion in their pretexts, and the same modes of mischief. Wickedness is a little more inventive. Whilst you are discussing
fashion, the fashion is gone by. The very same vice
assumes a new body. The spirit transmigrates; and,
far from losing its principle of life by the change of
its appearance, it is renovated in its new organs with
the fresh vigor of a juvenile activity. It walks abroad,
it continues its ravages, whilst you are gibbeting the
carcass or demolishing the tomb. You are terrifying yourselves with ghosts and apparitions, whilst
your house is the haunt of robbers. It is thus with
all those who, attending only to the shell and husk
? ? ? ? 420 REFLECTIONS ON THE
of history, think they are waging war with intolerance, pride, and cruelty, whilst, under color of abhorring the ill princples of antiquated parties, they are authorizing and feeding the same odious vices in different factions, and perhaps in worse.
Your citizens of Paris formerly had lent themselves as the ready instruments to slaughter the followers of Calvin, at the infamous massacre of St. Bartholomew. What should we say to those who
could think of retaliating on the Parisians of this day
the abominations and horrors of that time? They are,
indeed, brought to abhor that massacre. Ferocious as
they are, it is not difficult to make them dislike it,
because the politicians and fashionable teachers have
no interest in giving their passions exactly the same
direction. Still, however, they find it their interest to
keep the same savage dispositions alive. It was but
the other day that they caused this very massacre to
be acted on the stage for the diversion of the descendants of those who committed it. In this tragic farce
they produced the Cardinal of Lorraine' in his robes
of function, ordering general slaughter. Was this
spectacle intended to make the Parisians abhor persecution and loathe the effusion of blood? No: it
was to teach them to persecute their own pastors; it
was to excite them, by raising a disgust and horror
of their clergy, to an alacrity in hunting down to destruction an order which, if it ought to exist at all,
ought to exist not only in safety, but in reverence.
It was to stimulate their cannibal appetites (which
one would think had been gorged sufficiently) by
variety and seasoning, -- and to quicken them to an
alertness in new murders and massacres, if it should
suit the purpose of the Guises of the day. An As
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 421
sembly in which sat a multitude of priests and prelates was obliged to suffer this indignity at its door. The author was not sent to the galleys, nor the players to the house of correction. Not long after this exhibition, those players came forward to the Assembly to claim the rites of that very religion which they had dared to expose, and to show their prostituted
faces in the senate, whilst the Archbishop of Paris,
whose function was known to his people only by his
prayers and benedictions, and his wealth only by
alms, is forced to abandon his house, and to fly from
his flock, (as from ravenous wolves,) because, truly,
in the sixteenth century, the Cardinal of Lorraine
was a rebel and a murderer. *
Such is the effect of the perversion of history by
those who, for the same nefarious purposes, have
perverted every other part of learning. But those
who will stand upon that elevation of reason which
places centuries under our eye and brings things to
the true point of comparison, which obscures little
names and effaces the colors of little parties, and to
which nothing can ascend but the spirit and moral
quality of human actions, will say to the teachers
of the Palais Royal, -- The Cardinal of Lorraine was
the murderer of the sixteenth century; you have the
glory of being the murderers in the eighteenth; and
this is the only difference between you. But history in the nineteenth century, better understood aind better employed, will, I trust, teach a civilized posterity to abhor the misdeeds of both these barbarous ages. It will teach future priests and magistrates
not to retaliate upon the speculative and inactive
* This is on a supposition of the truth of this story; but he'was
not in France at the time. One name serves as well as another.
? ? ? ? 422 REFLECTIONS ON THE
atheists of future times the enormities committed by
the present practical zealots and furious fanatics of
that wretched error, which, in its quiescent state, is
more than punished, whenever it is embraced. It
will teach posterity not to make war upon either
religion or pl! ilosophy for tile'abuse which the hypocrites of both have made of the two most valuable
blessings conferred upon us by the bounty of the universal Patron, who in all things eminently favors and
protects the race of man.
If your clergy, or any clergy, should show themselves vicious beyond the fair bounds allowed to human infirmity, and to those professional faults which
can hardly be separated from professional virtues,
though their vices never can countenance the exercise of. oppression, I do admit that they would naturally have the effect of abating very much of our indignation against the tyrants who exceed measure and justice in their punishment. I can allow in clergymen, through all their divisions, some tenaciousness of their own opinion, some overflowings of zeal
for its propagation, some predilection to their own
state and office, some attachment to the interest of
their own corps, some preference to those who listen with docility to their doctrines beyond those who
scorn and deride them. I allow all this, because
I am a man who have to deal with men, and who
would not, through a violence of toleration, run into the greatest of all intolerance. I must bear with
infirmities, until they fester into crimes.
Undoubtedly, the natural progress of the passions,
from frailty to vice, ought to be prevented by a
watchful eye and a firm hand. But is it true that
the body of your clergy had passed those limits of a
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 423
just allowance? From the general style of your late
publications of all sorts, one would be led to believe
that your clergy in France were a sort of monsters:
an horrible composition of superstition, ignorance,
sloth, fraud, avarice, and tyranny. But is this true?
Is it true that the lapse of time, the cessation of conflicting interests,'the woful experience of the evils resulting from party rage, have had no sort of influence gradually to meliorate their minds? Is it true that they were daily renewing invasions on the civil
power, troubling the domestic quiet of their country,
and rendering the operations of its government feeble and precarious? Is it true that the clergy of our times have pressed down the laity with an iron hand,
and were in all places lighting up the fires of a
savage persecution? Did they by every fraud endeavor to increase their estates? Did they use to exceed the due demands on estates that were their
own? Or, rigidly screwing up right into wrong, did
they convert a legal claim into a vexatious extortion? When not possessed of power, were they filled with the vices of those who envy it? Were they
inflamed with a violent, litigious spirit of controversy? Goaded on with the ambition of intellectual sovereignty, were they ready to fly in the face of all
magistracy, to fire churches, to massacre the priests
of other descriptions, to pull down altars, and to
make their way over the ruins of subverted goveri.
ments to an empire of doctrine, sometimes flattering,
sometimes forcing, the consciences of men from the
jurisdiction of public institutions into a submission
to their personal authority, beginning with a claim
of liberty and ending with an abuse of power?
These, orI some of these, were the vices objected,
? ? ? ? 424 REFLECTIONS ON THE
and not wholly without foundation, to several of the
churchmen of former times, who belonged to the two
great parties which then divided and distracted Europe.
If there was in France, as in other countries there
visibly is, a great abatement, rather than any increase of these vices, instead of loading the present
clergy with the crimes of other men and the odious
character of other times, in common equity they
ought to be praised, encouraged, and supported, in
their departure from a spirit which disgraced their
predecessors, and for having assumed a temper of
mind and manners more suitable to their sacred
function.
When my occasions took me into France, towards
the close of the late reign, the clergy, under all their
forms, engaged a considerable part of my curiosity.
So far from finding (except from one set of men, not
then very numerous, though very active) the complaints and discontents against that body which some
publications had given me reason to expect, I perceived little or no public or private uneasiness on their
account. On further examination, I found the clergy, in general, persons of moderate minds and decorous manners: I include the seculars, and the regulars of both sexes. I had not the good fortune to know a great many of the parochial clergy: but in
general I received a perfectly good account of their
morals, and of their attention to their duties. With
some of the higher clergy I had a personal acquaintance, and of the rest in that class a very good means
of information. They were almost all of them persons of noble birth. They resembled others of their
own rank; and where there was ally difference, it was
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 425
in their favor. They were more fully educated than
the military noblesse, --so as by no means to disgrace
their profession by ignorance, or by want of fitness for
the exercise of their authority. They seemed to me,
beyond the clerical character, liberal and open, with
the hearts of gentlemen and men of honor, neither
insolent nor servile in their manners and conduct.
They seemed to me rather a superior class, a set of
men amongst whom you would not be surprised to
find a F4nelon. I saw among the clergy in Paris
(many of the description are not to be met with anywhere) men of great learning and candor; and I had
reason to believe that this description was not confined
to Paris. What I found in other places I know was
accidental, and therefore to be presumed a fair sample. I spent a few days in a provincial town, where,
in the absence of the bishop, I passed my evenings
with three clergymen, his vicars-general, persons who
would have done honor to any church. They were
all well-informed; two of them of deep, general, and
extensive erudition, ancient and modern, Oriental and
Western,- particularly in their own profession. They
had a more extensive knowledge of our English divines than I expected; and they entered into the
genius of those writers with a critical accuracy. One
of these gentlemen is since dead: the Abbe Morangis.
I pay this tribute without reluctance to the memory
of that noble, reverend, learned, and excellent person; and I should do the same with equal cheerfulnless to the merits of the others, who I believe are still living, if I did not fear to hurt those whom I am
unable to serve.
Some of these ecclesiastics of rank are, by all
titles, persons deserving of general respect. They
? ? ? ? 426 REFLECTIONS ON THE
are deserving of gratitude from me, and from many
English. If this letter should ever come into their
hands, I hope they will believe there are those of our
nation who feel for their unmerited fall, and for the
cruel confiscation of their fortunes, with no common
sensibility. What I say of them is a testimony, as
far as one feeble voice can go, which I owe to truth.
Whenever the question of this unnatural persecution
is concerned, I will pay it. No one shall prevent me
from being just and grateful. The time is fitted for
the duty; and it is particularly becoming to show
our justice and gratitude, when those who have
deserved well of us and of mankind are laboring
under popular obloquy and the persecutions of oppressive power.
You had before your Revolution about a hundred
and twenty bishops. A few of them were men of
eminent sanctity, and charity without limit. When
we talk of the heroic, of course we talk of rare virtue.
I believe the instances of eminent depravity may be
as rare amongst them as those of transcendent goodness. Examples of avarice and of licentiousness may
be picked out, I do not question it, by those who
delight in the investigation which leads to such discoveries. A man as old as I am will not be astonished that several, in every description, do not lead that perfect life of self-denial, with regard to wealth
or to pleasure, which is wished for by all, by some
expected, but by none exacted with more rigor than
by those who are the most attentive to ti eir own interests or the most indulgent to their own passions.
When I was in France, I am certain that the'number
of vicious prelates was not great. Certain individuals
among them, not distinguishable for the regularity of
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 427
their lives, made some amends %or their want of the
severe virtues in their possession of the liberal, and
were endowed with qualities which made them useful
in the Church and State. I am told, that, with few
exceptions, Louis the Sixteenth had been more atten
tive to character, in his promotions to that rank, than,
his immediate predecessor; and I believe (as some
spirit of reform has prevailed through the whole
reign) that it may be true. But the present ruling
power has shown a disposition only to plunder the
Church. It has punished all prelates: which is to
favor the vicious, at least in point of reputation. It
has made a degrading pensionary establishment, to
which no man of liberal ideas or liberal condition
will destine his children. It must settle into the
lowest classes of the people. As with you the inferior clergy are not numerous enough for their duties,
as these duties are beyond measure minute and toilsome, as you have left no middle classes of clergy at their ease, in future nothing of science or erudition
can exist in the Gallican Church. To complete the
project, without the least attention to the rights of
patrons, the Assembly has provided in future an elective clergy: an arrangement which will drive out of the clerical profession all men of sobriety, all who
can pretend to independence in their function or
their conduct, -and which will throw the whole direction of the public mind into the hands of a set of licentious, bold, crafty, factious, flattering wretches,
of such condition and such habits of life as will make
their contemptible -pensions (in comparison of which
the stipend of an exciseman is lucrative and honorable) an object of low and illiberal intrigue. Those officers whom they still call bishops are to be elected
? ? ? ? 428 REFLECTIONS ON THE
to a provision comparatively mean, through the same
arts, (that is, electioneering arts,) by men of all religious tenets that are known or can be invented.
The new lawgivers have not ascertained anything
whatsoever concerning their qualifications, relative
either to doctrine or to morals, no more than they
have done with regard to the subordinate clergy; nor
does it appear but that both the higher and the lower
may, at their discretion, practise or preach any mode
of religion or irreligion that they please. I do not
yet see what the jurisdiction of bishops over their
subordinates is to be, or whether they are to have
any jurisdiction at all.
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
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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.
