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 republick of Berne, one of the happiest, the most prosperous, and the best governed countries upon earth, is one of the great objects, at 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 révolution actuelle, ils ont résisté à "toutes les séductions du bigotisme, aux persécutions et aux tra"casseries des ennemis de la révolution. Oubliant leurs plus "grands intérêts pour rendre hommage aux veus d'ordre géné"ral qui ont déterminé l'assemblée nationale, ils voient, sans "se plaindre, supprimer cette foule d'établissemens ecclési"astiques par lesquels ils subsistoient; et même, en perdant "leur siège épiscopal la seule de toutes ses ressources qui

pouvoit, ou plutôt qui devoit, en toute équité, leur être "conservée; condamnés à la plus effrayante misère sans avoir “été ni pu être entendus, ils ne murmurent point, ils restent "fidèles aux principes du plus pur patriotisme; ils sont

encore prêtes à verser leur sung pour le maintien de la con "stitution, qui va réduire leur ville à la plus déplorable nul"lité." 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 had been always free ; their patience in beggary and ruin, and their suffering, without remonstrance, the most flagrant 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.

destruction

destruction of which they aim. I am told they have in some measure succeeded in sowing there 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, publickly 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 regard any of the others as their proper

See the proceedings of the confederation at Nantz.

prey.

prey*. Nations are wading deeper and deeper into an ocean of boundless debt. Publick debts which at first were a security to governments, by interesting many in the publick 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 ex

*"Si plures sunt ii quibus improbe datum est, quam illi qui"bus injuste ademptum est, idcirco plus etiam valent? Non “ enim numero hæc judicantur sed pondere. Quam autem ha"bet æquitatem, ut agrum multis annis, aut etiam sæculis ante

possessum, qui nullum habuit habeat; qui autum habuit "amittat. Ac, propter hoc injuriæ genus, Lacedæmonii Ly"fandrum Ephorum expulerunt: Agin regem (quod nunquam "antea apud eos acciderat) necaverunt: exque eo tempore "tantæ discordiæ secutæ sunt, ut et tyranni exsisterint, et op"timates exterminarentur, et preclarissime constituta respub"lica dilaberetur. Nec vero solum ipsa cecidit, sed etiam "reliquam Græciam evertit contagionibus malorum, quæ a "Lacedæmoniis profecta manarunt latius."-After speaking of the conduct of the model of true patriots, Aratus of Sycion, which was in a very different spirit, he 66 says, Sic par est 66 agere cum civibus; non ut bis jam vidimus, hastam in foro "ponere et bona civium voci subjicere præconis. At ille "Græcus (id quod fuit sapientis et præstantis viri) omnibus "consulendum esse putavit: eaque est summa ratio et sa"pientia boni civis, commoda civium non divellere, sed omnes eadem æquitate continere."-Cic. Off. 1.

tensive

tensive discontented monied 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 vigour for their purposes, they may seek new ones 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 favourable 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 correspondencies of the most extraordinary nature are forming, in several countries*. In such a state

* See two books entitled, Enige Originalschriften des Illuminatenordens.System und Folgen des Illuminatenordens. Munchen, 1787.

of

of things we ought to hold ourselves upon our guard. In all mutations (if mutations must be) the circumstance which will serve most to blunt the edge of their mischief, and to promote what good may be in thein, 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 departure 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,