over-rule prescription or to force a currency of their own fiction in the place of that which is real, and recognized by the law of nations. But you, who began with refusing to submit to the most moderate restraints, have ended by establishing an unheard of despotism. I find the ground upon which your confiscators go is this; that indeed their proceedings could not be supported in a court of juftice; but that the rules of prescription cannot bind a legislative assembly *. So that this legislative assembly of a free nation sits, not for the security, but for the destruction of property, and not of property only, but of every rule and maxim which can give it stability, and of those instruments which can alone give it circulation.

When the Anabaptists of Munster, in the sixteenth century, had filled Germany with confusion by their system of levelling and their wild opinions concerning property, to what country in Europe did not the progress of their fury furnish just cause of alarm? Of all things, wisdom is the most terrified with epidemical fanaticism, because of all enemies it is that against which she is the least able to furnish any kind of resource. We cannot be ignorant of the spirit of atheistical fanaticism, that is inspired by a multitude of writings, dispersed with incredible assiduity and expence, and by sermons delivered in all the streets and places of public resort in Paris. These writings and sermons have filled the populace with a

* Speech of Mr. Camus, published by order of the National Affembly.

black

black and savage atrocity of mind, which superfedes in them the common feelings of nature, as well as all sentiments of morality and religion; insomuch that these wretches are induced to bear with a sullen patience the intolerable distresses brought upon them by the violent convulsions and per mutations 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 republic of Berne, one of

* Whether the following description is striâly 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 per"fecutions et aux tracasseries des Ennemis de la Révolu"tion. Oubliant leurs plus grands intérêts pour rendre hommage aux vues d'ordre général qui ont determiné l'Affemblée Nationale, ils voient, sans se plaindre, supprimer "cette foule d'établissemens ecclésiastiques par lesquels ils « fubsistoient ; et même, en perdant leur siège épiscopal, la seule « de toutes ces ressources qui pouvoit, ou plutôt qui devoit,

en

toute équité, leur être conservée; condamnés à la plus essray"ante misère, sans avcir été ni pu être entendus, ils ne murmurent "point, ils restent fidèles aux principes du plus pur patriotisme;

ils font encore prêts à verser leur sang pour le maintien de la Constitution, qui va reduire leur Ville à la plus déplorable « nullité." 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 and confessed 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.

the

the happieft, the most profperous, and the best governed countries upon earth, is one of the great objects, at the deftruction of which they aim. I am told they have in fome measure fucceeded in fowing there the feeds of difcontent. They are bufy throughout Germany. Spain and Italy. have not been untried. England is not left out of the comprehenfive fcheme of their malignant charity; and in England we find those who stretch out their arms to them, who recommend their examples from more than one pulpit, and who choose, in more than one periodical mesting, publicly to correfpond with them, to applaud them, and to hold them up as objects for imitation; who receive from them tokens of confraternity, and standards confecrated amidst their rites and myfteries *; who fuggeft to them leagues of perpetual amity, at the very time when the power, to which our conftitution has exclufively delegated the federative capacity of this king'dom, may find it expedient to make war upon them.

It is not my fear of 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, least 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

* See the proceedings of the confederation at Nantz.

their proper prey and deeper into an ocean of boundless debt. Public debts, which at first were a security to governments, by interesting many in the public 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 extensive 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

Nations are wading deeper

Si plures funt ii quibus improbe datum eft, quam illi quibus injufte ademptum eft, idcirco plus etiam valent? Non "enim numero hæc judicantur fed pondere. Quam autem habet æquitatem, ut agrum multis annis, aut etiam fæculis ante poffeffum, qui nullum habuit habeat; qui autem habuit amittat. Ac, propter hoc injuriæ genus, Lacedæmonii Lyfandrum Ephorum expulerunt: Agin regem (quod nunquam antea apud eos acciderat) necaverunt: exque eo tempore tantæ difcordiæ fecutæ funt, ut et tyranni exfifterint, et optimates exterminarentur, et preclariffime conftituta ref publica dilaberetur. Nec vero folum ipfa cecidit, fed etiam reliquam Græciam evertit contagionibus malorum, quæ a "Lacedæmoniis profectæ manarunt latius."-After speaking of the conduct of the model of true patriots, Aratus of Sycion, which was in a very different spirit, he fays, "Sic par eft agere

cum civibus; non ut bis jam vidimus, haftam in foro ponere "et bona civium voci fubjicere præconis. At ille Græcus (id "quod fuit fapientis et præftantis viri) omnibus confulendum "effe putavit: eaque eft fumma ratio et fapientia boni civis, " commoda civium non divellere, fed omnes eadem æquitate " continere." Cic. Off. 1. 2.

with their springs relaxed, fo as not to be of fufficient vigour for their purposes, they may feek new ones that fhall 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 authorised. 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 unfitness for their estates. 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 correfpondences of the most extraordinary nature are forming, in feveral countries*. In fuch a ftate of things we ought to hold ourselves upon our guard. In all mutations (if mutations must be) the circumstance which will ferve 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 confiscation in France ought not to alarm other nations. They say it is not made from wanton rapacity; that it is a

* See two books intitled, Enige Originalfchriften des Illuminatenordens. Syftem und Folgen des Iiluminatenordens. Munchen 1787.