find equitable, vigilant, enlightened princes. A
monarch may be pious, punctual in a servile discharge of the duties of his
religion, very submissive and liberal to his priests, and yet at the same
time be destitute of every virtue and talent necessary for governing. To
princes, Religion is only an instrument destined to keep the people
more completely under the yoke. By the excellent principles of religious
morality, a tyrant who, during a long reign, has done nothing but oppress
his subjects, wresting, from them the fruits of their labour, sacrificing
them without mercy to his insatiable ambition,--a conqueror, who has
usurped the provinces of others, slaughtered whole nations, and who,
during his whole life, has been a scourge to mankind,--imagines his
conscience may rest, when, to expiate so many crimes, he has wept at the
feet of a priest, who generally has the base complaisance to console and
encourage a robber, whom the most hideous despair would too lightly punish
for the misery he has caused upon earth.

149.

A sovereign, sincerely devout, is commonly dangerous to the state.
Credulity always supposes a contracted mind; devotion generally absorbs
the attention, which a prince should pay to the government of his people.
Obsequious to the suggestions of his priests, he becomes the sport of
their caprices, the favourer of their quarrels, and the instrument and
accomplice of their follies, which he imagines to be of the greatest
importance. Among the most fatal presents, which religion has made the
world, ought to be reckoned those devout and zealous monarchs, who, under
an idea of working for the welfare of their subjects, have made it
a sacred duty to torment, persecute, and destroy those, who thought
differently from themselves. A bigot, at the head of an empire, is one of
the greatest scourges. A single fanatical or knavish priest, listened to
by a credulous and powerful prince, suffices to put a state in disorder.

In almost all countries, priests and pious persons are intrusted with
forming the minds and hearts of young princes, destined to govern nations.
What qualifications have instructors of this stamp! By what interests can
they be animated? Full of prejudices themselves, they will teach their
pupil to regard superstition, as most important and sacred; its chimerical
duties, as most indispensable, intolerance and persecution, as the true
foundation of his future authority. They will endeavour to