penfioners? Had you no way of turning the revenue to account, but through the improvident resource 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.

The

But the inftitutions favour of fuperftition in their very principle; and they nourish it by a permanent and ftanding influence. This I do not mean to difpute; but this ought not to hinder you from deriving from fuperstition itself any resources 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 superftition 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 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 enthusiastic shape or other, elfe you will deprive weak minds of a resource found neceffary to the strongest. body of all true religion confists, 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 least of the Munera Terræ) are not violently attached to these things, nor do they violently hate them. Wisdom is not the most severe corrector of folly. They are the rival follies, which mutually wage fo unrelenting a war; and which make fo cruel a use 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 enthusiasm he would condemn

demn or bear, perhaps he would think the fuperftition which builds, to be more tolerable than that which demolishes that which adorns a country, than that which. deforms it that which endows, than that which plunders. -that which difpofes to mistaken beneficence, than that which ftimulates to real injuftice-that which leads a man. to refufe to himself lawful pleasures, than that which fnatches from others the fcanty subsistence of their selfdenial. Such, I think, is very nearly the state of the question between the ancient founders of monkish super-. ftition, and the fuperftition of the pretended philosophers

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

In every profperous community fomething more is pro duced 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 fpring of labour; this repose the fpur to industry. The only concern of the ftate is, that the capital taken in rent from the land, fhould be returned again to the industry from whence it came; and that its expenditure should be with the least poffible detriment to the morals of those who expend it, and to those of the people to whom it is returned.

pur

In all the views of receipt, expenditure, and perfonal employment, a fober 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 extenfive confifcation, we ought to have fome rational affurance that the chafers of the confifcated property will be in a confiderable degree more laborious, more virtuous, more fober, lefs difpofed to extort an unreasonable proportion of the gains of the labourer, or to confume on themselves a larger fhare than is fit for the measure of an individual, or that they should be qualified to dispense the furplus in a more steady

fteady and equal mode, fo as to answer the purposes of a politic expenditure, than the old poffeffors, call those poffeffors, bifhops, or canons, or commendatory abbots," or monks, or what you pleafe. The monks are lazy. Be it fo. Suppose them no otherwife employed than by finging in the choir. They are as ufefully employed as those who neither fing nor fay. As ufefully even as thofe who fing upon the ftage. They are as ufefully employed. as if they worked from dawn to dark in the innumerable fervile, degrading, unfeemly, unmanly, and often most unwholesome and peftiferous occupations, to which by the focial œconomy fo many wretches are inevitably doomed. If it were not generally pernicious to difturb the natural course of things, and to impede, in any degree, the great wheel of circulation which is turned by the ftrangely directed labour of these unhappy people, I fhould be infinitely more inclined forcibly to rescue them from their miferable industry, than violently to difturb 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 defpotifm of fancy, who in their own imperious way will diftribute the furplus product of the foil, can justify the toleration of fuch trades and employments in a well-regulated state. But, for this purpose 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. But in the prefent cafe, perhaps they are not upon a par, and the difference is in favour of the poffeffion. It does not appear to me, that the expences of those whom you are going to expel, do, in fact, take a courfe fo directly and fo generally leading to vitiate and degrade and render miferable those through whom they pafs, as the expences of those favourites whom you are intruding into their houfes. Why should the expenditure of a great landed property, which is a difperfion of the furplus product of

the

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the foil, appear intolerable to you or to me, when it takes its course through the accumulation of vast libraries, which are the hiftory of the force and weakness of the human mind; through great collections of ancient records, medals, and coins, which attest and explain laws and cuftoms; through paintings and ftatues, that, by imitating nature, feem to extend the limits of crea tion; through grand monuments of the dead, which continue the regards and connections 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 tastes prevailed in scattered individuals? Does not the fweat of the mafon and carpenter, who toil in order to partake the fweat of the peasant, flow as pleasantly and as falubriously, in the conftruction and repair of the majestic edifices of religion, as in the painted booths and fordid fties of vice and luxury; as honourably and as profitably in repairing those facred works, which grow hoary with innumerable years, as on the momentary receptacles of tranfient voluptuousness; in opera-houses, and brothels, and gaming-houses, and club-houses, and obelisks in the Champ de Mars? Is the furplus product of the olive and the vine worse employed in the frugal fuftenance of perfons, whom the fictions of a pious imagination raises to dignity by conftruing in the fervice of God, than in pampering the innumerable multitude of those who are degraded by being made useless domeftics fubfervient 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 maifons, and petit foupers, and all the innumerable fopperies and follies in which opulence fports away the burthen of its fuperfluity?

We tolerate even thefe; not from love of them, but for fear of worse. We tolerate them, because property and liberty, to a degree, require that toleration.

But

But why profcribe the other, and furely, in every point of view, the more laudable use of eftates? 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 fuppofition 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 fufceptible of a public direction by the power of the ftate, 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 feems to me a very material confideration for thofe who undertake any thing which merits the name of a politie enterprize.-So far as

to the estates of monafteries.

With regard to the eftates poffeffed by bishops and canons, and commendatory abbots, I cannot find out for what reafon fome landed estates may not be held otherwife than by inheritance. Can any philosophic fpoiler undertake to demonstrate the positive or the comparative evil, of having a certain, and that too a large portion of landed property, paffing in fucceffion through perfons whofe title to it is, always in theory, and often in fact, an eminent degree of piety, morals, and learning; a property which, by its deftination, in their turn, and on the fcore of merit, gives to the noblest families renovation and fupport, to the lowest the means of dignity and elevation; a property, the tenure of which is the performance of fome duty, (whatever value you may choose to fet upon that duty) and the character of whofe proprietors demands at least an exterior decorum and gravity of manners; who are to exercife a generous but temperate hofpitality; part of whofe income they are to confider as a truft for charity; and who, even when they fail in their Struft, when they flide from their character, and degenerate into a mere common fecular nobleman or gentleman, are in no refpect worse than those who may fucceed them in their forfeited poffeffions? Is it better that estates should be held by those who have no duty than by those who