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fordid sties of vice and luxury; as honourably and as profitably in repairing those sacred works, which grow hoary with innumerable years, as on the momentary receptacles of tranfient voluptuoufness; in opera-houses, and brothels, and gaminghouses, and club-houses, and obelisks in the Champ de Mars? Is the surplus product of the olive and the vine worse employed in the frugal fustenance of persons, whom the fictions of a pious imagination raises to dignity by conftruing in the service of God, than in pampering the innumerable multitude of those who are degraded by being made useless domestics subservient to the pride of man? Are the decorations of temples an expenditure lefs worthy a wife man than ribbons, and laces, and national cockades, and petits maisons, and petit foupers, and all the innumerable fopperies and follies in which opulence sports away the burthen of its fuperfluity?

We tolerate even these; not from love of them, but for fear of worse. We tolerate them, because property and liberty, to a degree, require that toleration. But why proscribe the other, and furely, in every point of view, the more laudable use of estates? Why, through the violation of all property, through an outrage upon every principle of liberty, forcibly carry them from the better to the worse?

This comparison between the new individuals and the old corps is made upon a supposition that no reform could be made in the latter. But in a question of reformation, I always confider corporate bodies, whether fole or confifting of many,

to be much more susceptible of a public direction by the power of the state, in the use of their property, and in the regulation of modes and habits of life in their members, than private citizens ever can be, or perhaps ought to be; and this seems to me a very material confideration for those who undertake any thing which merits the name of a politic enterprize. So far as to the eftates of monafteries.

With regard to the estates possessed by bishops and canons, and commendatory abbots, I cannot find out for what reason some landed estates may not be held otherwise than by inheritance. Can any philofophic spoiler undertake to demonftrate the positive or the comparative evil, of having a certain, and that too a large portion of landed property, passing in fucceffion thro' persons whose title to it is, always in theory, and often in fact, an eminent degree of piety, morals, and learning; a property which, by its destination, in their turn, and on the score of merit, gives to the noblest families renovation and support, to the lowest the means of dignity and elevation; a property, the tenure of which is the performance of some duty, (whatever value you may choose to fet upon that duty) and the character of whose proprietors demands at least an exterior decorum and gravity of manners; who are to exercise a generous but temperate hofpitality; part of whose income they are to confider as a trust for charity; and who, even when they fail in their trust, when they flide from their character, and degenerate into a mere common fecular nobleman or gentleman, are in no respect worse than thofe

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those who may succeed them in their forfeited pof feffions? Is it better that estates should be held by those who have no duty than by those who have one?-by those whose character and destination point to virtues, than by those who have no rule and direction in the expenditure of their eftates but their own will and appetite? Nor are these estates held altogether in the character or with the evils supposed inherent in mortmain. They pass from hand to hand with a more rapid circulation than any other. No excess is good, and therefore too great a proportion of landed property may be held officially for life; but it does not feem to me of material injury to any commonwealth, that there should exist some estates that have a chance of being acquired by other means than the previous acquifition of

money.

This letter is grown to a great length, though it is indeed short with regard to the infinite extent of the subject. Various avocations have from time to time called my mind from the subject. I was not forry to give myself leifure to observe whether, in the proceedings of the national assembly, I might not find reasons to change or to qualify fome of my first sentiments. Every thing has confirmed me more strongly in my first opinions. It was my original purpose to take a view of the principles of the national affembly with regard to the great and fundamental establishments; and to compare the whole of what you have substituted in the place of what you have destroyed, with the feveral members of our British constitution. But

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this plan is of greater extent than at first I com puted, and I find that you have little defire to take the advantage of any examples. At present I muft content myself with fome remarks upon your establishments; referving for another time what I proposed to say concerning the spirit of our British monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, as practically they exift.

I have taken a review of what has been done by the governing power in France. I have certainly spoke of it with freedom. Those whose principle it is to despise the antient permanent sense of mankind, and to set up a scheme of society on new principles, must naturally expect that fuch of us who think better of the judgment of the human race than of theirs, should confider both them and their devices, as men and schemes upon their trial. They must take it for granted that we attend much to their reason, but not at all to their authority. They have not one of the great influencing prejudices of mankind in their favour. They avow their hoftility to opinion. Of course they must expect no support from that influence, which, with every other authority, they have deposed from the feat of its jurifdiction.

I can never consider this assembly as any thing else than a voluntary association of men, who have availed themselves of circumstances, to seize upon the power of the state. They have not the fanction and authority of the character under which they first met. They have assumed another of a very different nature; and have

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completely altered and inverted all the relations in which they originally stood. They do not hold the authority they exercise under any conftitutional law of the state. They have departed from the inftructions of the people by whom they were fent; which instructions, as the assembly did not act in virtue of any antient ufage or fettled law, were the sole source of their authority. The most confiderable of their acts have not been done by great majorities; and in this fort of near divifions, which carry only the constructive authority of the whole, strangers will consider reasons as well as refolutions.

If they had fet up this new experimental government as a necessary substitute for an expelled tyranny, mankind would anticipate the time of prescription, which, through long usage, mellows into legality governments that were violent in their commencement. All those who have affections which lead them to the conservation of civil order would recognize, even in its cradle, the child as legitimate, which has been produced from those principles of cogent expediency to which all just governments owe their birth, and on which they justify their continuance. But they will be late and reluctant in giving any fort of countenance to the operations of a power, which has derived its birth from no law and no neceffity; but which on the contrary has had its origin in those vices and sinister practices by which the social union is often disturbed and sometimes destroyed. This affembly has hardly a year's prescription. We have their own word for it that they have made a revolution.

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