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of things we ought to hold ourselves upon our guard. In all mutations (if mutations must be) the circumstance which will ferve most to blunt the edge of their mischief, and to promote what good may be in them, is, that they should find us with our minds tenacious of justice, and tender of property.

But it will be argued, that this confiscation in France ought not to alarm other nations. They say it is not made from wanton rapacity; that it is a great measure of national policy, adopted to remove an extensive, inveterate, superstitious mifchief. 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 departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the fufpicion 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 difgrace and even of penalty-I am sure it is unjust in legislature, by an arbitrary act, to offer a fudden violence to their minds and their feelings; forcibly to degrade them from their state and condition, condition, and to stigmatise with shame and in fany that character and those customs which be føre had been made the measure of their happi. nefs and honour. If to this be added an expul fion from their habitations, and a confiscation of all their goods, I am not fagacious enough to difcover how this despotick sport, made of the feel ings, confciences, prejudices, and properties of men, can be difcriminated from the rankest ty fanny.

If the injustice of the course pursued in France be clear, the policy of the measure, that is the publick 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 paf fion, who has nothing in view in his projects but the publick good, a great difference will imrnediately ftrike him, between what policy would dictate on the original introduction of fuch inftitutions, and on a question of their total abolition, where they have caft 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 be destroyed without notably impairing the other. He might be embarraffed if the cafe were really fuch as fophifters represent it in their paltry kyle of debating. But in this, as in most queftions of state, there is a middle. There is fomething elfe than the mere alternative of abfolute deftruction, or unreformed existence. Spartam nactus es; hanc exorna. This is, in my opinion, a rule of profound fenfe, 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 prefumption, to confider 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 fo ciety otherwise constituted than he finds it; but a good patriot, and a true politician, always confiders how he shall make the most of the exifting materials of his country. A disposition to pre ferve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman, Every thing else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution,

There are moments in the fortune of states when particular men are called to make improvements by great mental exertion. In those mo ments, even when they seem to enjoy the confi dence of their prince and country, and to be in. vested with full authority, they have not always apt instruments. A politician, to do great things, looks for a power, what our workmen call a pur chafe; and if he finds that power, in politicks as in mechanicks he cannot be at a loss to apply it, In, the monaftick institutions, in my opinion, was found

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found a great power for the mechanism of politick benevolence. There were revenues with a publick direction; there were men wholly set apart and dedicated to publick purposes, without any other than publick ties and publick principles; men without the possibility of converting the eftate of the community into a private fortune; men denied to self-interests, whose avarice is for some community; men to whom personal poverty is honour, and implicit obedience stands in the place of freedom. In vain shall a man look to the possibility of making such things when he wants them. The winds blow as they lift. These inftitutions 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 deferving to rank high, or even to be mentioned in the order of great ftatesmen, who, having obtained the command and direction of fuch a power as existed in the wealth, the discipline, and the habits of such corporations, as those which you have rashly destroyed, cannot find any way of converting it to the great and lasting benefit of his country. On

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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 expanfive force of fixed air in nitre, or the power of steam, or of electricity, or of magnetism. These energies always existed in nature, and they were always difcernible. They feemed, some of them unserviceable, some noxious, some no better than a sport to children; until contemplative ability, combining with practick skill, tamed their wild nature, fubdued 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 perfons, whose mental and whose bodily labour you might direct, and fo 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 refource of a spendthrift sale? If you were thus destitute of mental funds, the proceeding is in its natural course. Your politicians do not under. ftand

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