ftance, to the fidelity of government; in the fecond, to its power. If they find the old governments effete, worn out, and with their fprings relaxed, fo as not to be of fufficient vigour for their purposes, they may feek new ones that thall be poffeffed of more energy; and this energy will be derived, not from an acquifition of refources, but from a contempt of juftice. Revolutions are favourable to confifcation; and it is impoffible to know under what obnoxious names the next confifcations will be authorifed. I am fure that the principles predominant in France extend to very many perfons and defcriptions of perfons in all countries who think their innoxious indolence their fecurity. This kind of innocence in proprietors may be argued into inutility; and inutility into an unfitnefs for their eftates. Many parts of Europe are in open diforder. In many others there is a hollow murmuring under ground; a confufed movement is felt, that threatens a general earthquake in the political world. Already confederacies and correfpondencies of the most extraordinary nature are forming, in feveral countries t. In fuch a state of things we ought to hold ourselves upon our guard. In all mutations (if mutations must be) the circumftance which will serve most to blunt the edge of their mischief, and to promote what good may be in them, is, that they fhould find us with our minds tenacious of juftice, and tender of property.

But it will be argued, that this confifcation in France ought not to alarm other nations. They fay it is not made from wanton rapacity; that it is a great measure of national policy, adopted to remove an extenfive, inveterate, fuperftitious mischief. It is with the greateft difficulty that I am able to separate policy from juftice. Juftice is itself the great standing

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+ See two books intitled, Enige Originalfchriften des Illuminatenordens.-Syftem und Folgen des Illuminatenordens. Munchen 1787.

ftanding policy of civil fociety; and any eminent de parture from it, under any circumftances, lies under the fufpicion of being no policy at all.

When men are encouraged to go into a certain mode of life by the exifting 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 fure it is unjuft in legislature, by an ar bitrary act, to offer a fudden violence to their minds -and their feelings; forcibly to degrade them from their ftate and condition, and to ftigmatize with fhame and infamy that character and thofe customs which before had been made the measure of their happinefs and honour. If to this be added an expulfion from their habitations, and a confifcation of all ! their goods, I am not fagacious enough to difcover how this defpotic fport, made of the feelings, consciences, prejudices, and propertics of men, can be dif criminated from the rankeft tyranny.

If the injuftice of the courfe 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 leaft as important. To a mai who acts under the influence of no paffion, who has nothing in view in his projects but the public good, a great difference will immediately ftrike him, between what policy would dictate on the original introduction of fuch inftitutions, and on a queftion of their total abolition, where they have caft their roots wide and deep, and where by long habit things - more valuable than themfelves are fo adapted to them, and in a manner interwoven with them, that the one cannot be deftroyed without notably impairing the other. He might be embarraffed, if the

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cafe

cafe were really fuch as fophifters represent it in their paltry ftyle of debating. But in this, as in moft

queftions of state, there is a middle. There is fomething else than the mere alternative of abfolute deftruction, or unreformed exiftence. 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 honeft 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 fcribble whatever he pleases. A man full of warm fpeculative benevolence may with his fociety otherwife conftituted than he finds it; but a good patriot, and a true politician, always confiders how he fhall make the most of the exifting materials of his country. A difpofition to preferve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my ftandard of a statefman. Every thing elfe is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.

There are moments in the fortune of ftates when particular men are called to make improvements by great mental exertion. In thofe moments, even when they feem to enjoy the confidence of their prince and country, and to be invested with full authority, they have not always apt inftruments. 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 lofs to apply it. In the monaftic inftitutions, in my opinion, was found a great power for the mechanifm of politic benevolence. There were revenues with a public direction; there were men wholly fet apart and dedicated to public purposes, without any other than public ties and public principles; men without the poflibility of converting the estate of the community into a private fortune;: men denied to felf-interefts, whofe avarice is for fome community; men to whom perfonal poverty

is

is honour, and implicit obedience stands in the place of freedom. In vain fhall a man look to the poffibility of making fuch things when he wants them. The winds blow as they lift. Thefe inftitutions are the products of enthufiafm; they are the inftruments of wifdom. Wisdom cannot create

materials; they are the gifts of nature or of chance; her pride is in the ufe. The perennial exiftence of bodies corporate and their fortunes, are things particularly fuited to a man who has long views; who meditates defigns that require time in fashioning; and which propofe duration when they are accomplished. He is not deferving to rank high, or even to be mentioned in the order of great statefmen, who, having obtained the command and direction of fuch a power as existed in the wealth, the difcipline, and the habits of fuch corporations, as those which you have rafhly deftroyed, cannot find any way of converting it to the great and lafting benefit of his country. On the view of this fubject a thoufand ufes fuggeft themselves to a contriving mind. To deftroy any power, growing wild from the rank productive force of the human mind, is almost tantamount, in the moral world, to the deftruction 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 mixed air in nitre, or the power of fteam, or of electricity, or of magnetism. These energies always exifted in nature, and they were always difcernible. They feemed, fome of them unferviceable, fome noxious, fome no better than a sport to children; until contemplative ability, combining with practic fkill, tamed their wild nature, fubdued them to use, and rendered them at once the moft powerful and the moft tractable agents, in fubfervience to the great views and defigns of men. Did fifty thousand persons, whofe mental and whofe bodily labour you might di

rect,

rect, 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 inftitutions favour of fuperftition in their very principle; and they nourish it by a permanent and standing influence. This I do not mean to dif pute; 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 excefs I think it becomes a very great evil. It is, however, a moral fubject; and of courfe 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 enthusiastic shape or other, elfe you will deprive weak minds of a refource found neceffary to the ftrongeft. The body of all true religion confifts, to be fure, in obedience to the will of the fovereign of the world; 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 leaft of the Munera Terra) are not violently attached to these things, nor do they violently