labour you might direct, and fo many hundred thousand a year of a revenue, which was neither lazy nor fuperftitious, appear too big for your abilities to wield? Had you no way of using the men but by converting monks into penfioners? Had you no way of turning the revenue to account, but through the improvident refource of a fpendthrift fale? If you were thus deftitute of mental funds, the proceeding is in its natural course. Your politicians do not understand their trade; and therefore they fell their tools.

But the institutions favour of superstition in their very principle; and they nourish it by a permanent and standing influence. This I do not mean to difpute; but this ought not to hinder you from deriving from fuperftition itself any refources which may thence be furnished for the public advantage. You derive benefits from many difpofitions and many paffions of the human mind, which are of as doubtful a colour in the moral eye, as fuperftition itself. It was your business to correct and mitigate every thing which was noxious in this paffion, as in all the paffions. But is fuperftition the greatest of all poffible vices? In its poffible excess I think it becomes a very great evil. It is, however, a moral subject; and of course admits of all degrees and all modifications. Superftition is the religion of feeble minds; and they must be tolerated in an intermixture of it, in fome trifling or fome enthusiaftic fhape or other, elfe you will deprive weak minds of a resource found neceffary to the strongest. The body of all true religion confifts, to be fure, in obedience to the will of the fovereign of the world,

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in a confidence in his declarations; and an imitation of his perfections. The reft is our own. It may be prejudicial to the great end; it may be auxiliary. Wife men, who as fuch, are not admirers (not admirers at least of the Munera Terre) are not violently attached to these things, nor do they violently hate them. Wisdom is not the most fevere corrector of folly. They are the rival follies, which mutually wage fo unrelenting a war; and which make fo cruel a ufe of their advantages, as they can happen to engage the immoderate vulgar on the one fide or the other in their quarrels. Prudence would be neuter; but if, in the contention between fond attachment and fierce antipathy concerning things in their nature not made to produce fuch heats, a prudent man were obliged to make a choice of what errors and exceffes of enthufiafm he would condemn or bear, perhaps he would think the fuperftition which builds, to be more tolerable than that which demolifhes-that which adorns a country, than that which deforms it-that which endows, than that which plunders-that which difposes to mistaken beneficence, than that which ftimulates to real injuftice that which leads a man to refufe to himfelf lawful pleasures, than that which snatches from others the scanty fubfiftence of their felf-denial. Such, I think, is very nearly the state of the queftion between the ancient founders of monkish fuperftition, and the fuperftition of the pretended philofophers of the hour.

For the prefent I poftpone all confideration of the fuppofed public profit of the fale, which however

I conceive to be perfectly delufive. I shall here only confider it as a transfer of property. On the policy of that transfer I fhall trouble you with a few thoughts.

In every profperous community fomething more is produced than goes to the immediate fupport of the producer. This furplus forms the income of the landed capitalist. It will be spent by a proprietor who does not labour. But this idleness is itself the spring of labour; this repose the spur to industry. The only concern of the ftate is, that the capital taken in rent from the land, should be returned again to the industry from whence it came; and that its expenditure fhould be with the leaft poffible detriment to the morals of those who expend it, and to those of the people to whom it is returned.

In all the views of receipt, expenditure, and perfonal employment, a sober legiflator would carefully compare the poffeffor whom he was recommended to expel, with the ftranger who was proposed to fill his place. Before the inconveniences are incurred which must attend all violent revolutions in property through extensive confifcation, we ought to have fome rational affurance that the purchasers of the confiscated property will be in a confiderable degree more laborious, more virtuous, more fober, lefs disposed to extort an unreasonable proportion of the gains of the labourer, or to confume on themfelves a larger share than is fit for the measure of an individual, or that they should be qualified to difpenfe the furplus in a more steady and equal mode, so as to answer the purposes of a politic expenditure, than the old poffeffors, call thofe poffeffors,

poffeffors, bishops, or canons, or commendatory abbots, or monks, or what you pleafe. The monks are lazy. Be it fo. Suppose them no otherwise employed than by finging in the choir. They are as usefully employed as those who neither fing nor fay. As usefully even as those who fing upon the stage. They are as usefully employed as if they worked from dawn to dark in the innumerable fervile, degrading, unfeemly, unmanly, and often moft unwholesome and peftiferous occupations, to which by the focial œconomy fo many wretches are inevitably doomed. If it were not generally pernicious to disturb the natural course of things, and to impede, in any degree, the great wheel of circulation which is turned by the strangely directed labour of these unhappy people, I fhould be infinitely more inclined forcibly to rescue them from their miserable industry, than violently to disturb the tranquil repofe of monaftic quietude. Humanity, and perhaps policy, might better juftify me in the one than in the other. It is a fubject on which I have often reflected, and never reflected without feeling from it. I am fure that no confideration, except the neceffity of fubmitting to the yoke of luxury, and the defpotifin of fancy, who in their own imperious way will diftribute the furplus produc of the foil, can justify the toleration of fuch trades and employments in a well-regulated ftate. But, for this purpofe of diftribution, it feems to me, that the idle expences of monks are quite as well directed as the idle expences of us lay-loiterers.

When the advantages of the poffeffion, and of the project, are on a par, there is no motive for a change.

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But in the prefent cafe, perhaps they are not up par, and the difference is in favour of the poffeff... It does not appear to me, that the expences of thofe whom you are going to expel, do, in fact, take a course fo directly and fo generally leading to vitiate, and degrade and render miferable those through whom they pass, as the expences of thofe favourites whom you are intruding into their houses. Why fhould the expenditure of a great landed property, which is a difperfion of the furplus product of the foil, appear intolerable to you or to me, when it takes its course through the accumulation of vaft libraries, which are the hiftory of the force and weakness of the human mind; through great collections of antient records, medals, and coins, which atteft and explain laws and customs; through paintings and ftatues, that, by imitating nature, feem to extend the limits of creation; through grand monuments of the dead, which continue the regards and connexions of life beyond the grave; through collections of the fpecimens of nature, which become a representative affembly of all the claffes and families of the world, that by difpofition facilitate, and, by exciting curiofity, open the avenues to fcience? If, by great permanent establishments, all these objects of expence are better fecured from the inconftant fport of perfonal caprice and perfonal extravagance, are they worse than if the fame taftes prevailed in fcattered individuals? Does not the fweat of the mason and carpenter, who toil in order to partake the sweat of the peafant, flow as pleafantly and as falubriously, in the conftruction and repair of the majestic edifices of religion, as in the painted booths and