Thefe difturbers were not fo much like men ufurping power, as afferting their natural place in fociety. Their rifing was to illuminate and beautify the world. Their conqueft over their competitors was by outfhining them. The hand that, like a destroying angel, fmote the country, communicated to it the force and energy under which it fuffered. I do not fay (God forbid) I do not fay, that the virtues of fuch men were to be taken as a balance to their crimes; but they were fome corrective to their effects. Such was, as I faid, our Cromwell. Such were your whole race of Guifes, Condés, and Colignis. Such the Richlieus, who in more quiet times acted in the fpirit of a civil war. Such, as better men, and in a lefs dubious caufe, were your Henry the 4th and your Sully, though nurfed in civil confufions, and not wholly without fome of their taint. It is a thing to be wondered at, to fee how very foon France, when he had a moment to refpire, recovered and emerged from the longest and moft dreadful civil war that ever was known in any nation. Why? Becaufe, among all their maffacres, they had not flain the mind in their country. A confcious dignity, a noble pride, a generous fenfe of glory and emulation, was not extinguished. On the contrary, it was kindled and inflamed. The organs alfo of the tate, however shattered, exifted. All the prizes of honour and virtue, all the rewards, all the diftinctions, remained. But your present confufion, like a palfy, has attacked the fountain of life itself. Every perfon in your country, in a fituation to be actuated by a principle of honour, is difgraced and degraded, and can entertain no fenfation of life, except in a mortified and humiliated indignation. But this generation will quickly pafs away. The next generation of the nobility will resemble the artificers and clowns, and money-jobbers, ufurers, and Jews, who will be always their fellows, fometimes their mafters. Believe, me, Sir, thofe who attempt to level, never equalize. In all focieties, confifting of various descriptions of citizens, fome defcription must be uppermoft. The levellers therefore only change and pervert the natural order of things; they load the edifice of fociety, by fetting up in the air what the folidity of the structure requires to be on the ground. The affociations of taylors and carpenters, of which the republic (of Paris, for instance) is composed, cannot be equal to the fituation, into which, by the worst of ufurpations, an ufurpation on the prerogatives of nature, you attempt to force them. The chancellor of France at the opening of the states, faid, in a tone of oratorial flourish, that all occupations were honourable. If he meant only, that no honeft employment was difgraceful, he would not have gone beyond the truth. But in afferting, that any thing is honourable, we imply some distinction in its favour. The occupation of an hair-dreffer, or of a working tallowchandler, cannot be a matter of honour to any perfon perfon-to fay nothing of a number of other more fervile employments. Such defcriptions of men ought not to fuffer oppreffion from the ftate; but the state fuffers oppreffion, if fuch as they, either individually or collectively, are permitted to rule. In this you think you are combating pre-, judice, but you are at war with nature *. I do not, my dear Sir, conceive you to be of that fophiftical captious fpirit, or of that uncandid dulnefs, as to require, for every general obfervation or fentiment, an explicit detail of the correctives and exceptions, which reafon will prefume to be included in all the general propofitions which come from reafonable men. You do not imagine, that I wish to confine power, authority, and diftinction to blood, and names, and titles. No, Sir. There is no qualification for govern * Ecclefiafticus, chap. xxxviii. verse 24, 25. "The wif"dom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure; "and he that hath little bufinefs fhall become wife."-" How "can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough, and that glo"rieth in the goad; that driveth oxen; and is occupied in "their labours; and whofe talk is of bullocks ?" Ver. 27. "" So every carpenter and work-mafter that labour"eth night and day." &c. Ver. 33. They fhall not be fought for in public counsel, "nor fit high in the congregation: They fhall not fit on the judges feat, nor understand the fentence of judgment: they cannot declare juftice and judgment, and they shall "not be found where parables are fpoken." Ver. 34. "But they will maintain the ftate of the world." I do not determine whether this book be canonical, as the Gallican church (till lately) has confidered it, or apocryphal, as here it is taken. I am fure it contains a great deal of fenfe, and truth. ment, ment, but virtue and wifdom, actual or prefumptive. Wherever they are actually found, they have, in whatever state, condition, profeffion or trade, the paffport of Heaven to human place and honour. Woe to the country which would madly and impiously reject the fervice of the talents and virtues, civil, military, or religious, that are given to grace and to ferve it; and would condemn to obfcurity every thing formed to diffufe luftre and glory around a ftate. Woe to that country too, that paffing into the oppofite extreme, confiders a low education, a mean contracted view of things, a fordid mercenary Occupation, as a preferable title to command. Every thing ought to be open; but not indifferently to every man. No rotation; no appointment by lot; no mode of election operating in the fpirit of fortition or rotation, can be generally good in a government converfant in extenfive objects. Because they have no tendency, direct or indirect, to felect the man with a view to the duty, or to accommodate the one to the other. I do not hesitate to fay, that the road to eminence and power, from obfcure condition, ought not to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of courfe. If rare merit be the rareft of all rare things, it ought to pafs through fome fort of probation, The temple of honour ought to be feated on an eminence. If it be open through virtue, let it be remembered too, that virtue is never tried but by fome difficulty, and fome ftruggle. Nothing is a due and adequate representation of a state, that does not reprefent its ability, as well well as its property. But as ability is a vigorous and active principle, and as property is fluggish,' inert, and timid, it never can be fafe from the invafions of ability, unless it be, out of all proportion, predominant in the reprefentation. It must be represented too in great maffes of accumulation, or it is not rightly protected. The characteristic effence of property, formed out of the combined principles of its acquifition and confervation, is to be unequal. The great maffes therefore which excite envy, and tempt rapacity, must be put out of the poffibility of danger. Then they form a natural rampart about the leffer properties in all their gradations. The fame quantity of property, which is by the natural courfe of things divided among many, has not the fame operation. Its defenfive power is weakened as it is diffufed. In this diffufion each man's portion is lefs than what, in the eagerness of his defires, he may flatter himself to obtain by diffipating the accumulations of others. The plunder of the few would indeed give but a fhare inconceivably fmall in the diftribution to the many. But the many are not capable of making this calculation; and thofe who lead them to rapine, never intend this diftribution. The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of fociety itself. It makes our weakness fubfervient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The poffeffors of family wealth, and of the diftinction which attenda |