y to facilitate the means of public oppressions--and cruel
and iniquitous decrees are rendered still more so by the mode of
enforcing them.

I have met with no person who could conceive the necessity of expelling
the female religious from their convents. It was, however, done, and
that with a mixture of meanness and barbarity which at once excites
contempt and detestation. The ostensible, reasons were, that these
communities afforded an asylum to the superstitious, and that by their
entire suppression, a sale of the houses would enable the nation to
afford the religious a more liberal support than had been assigned them
by the Constituent Assembly. But they are shallow politicians who expect
to destroy superstition by persecuting those who practise it: and so far
from adding, as the decree insinuates, to the pensions of the nuns, they
have now subjected them to an oath which, to those at least whose
consciences are timid, will act as a prohibition to their receiving what
they were before entitled to.

The real intention of the legislature in thus entirely dispersing the
female religious, besides the general hatred of every thing connected
with religion, is, to possess itself of an additional resource in the
buildings and effects, and, as is imagined by some, to procure numerous
and convenient state prisons. But, I believe, the latter is only an
aristocratic apprehension, suggested by the appropriation of the convents
to this use in a few places, where the ancient prisons are full.--
Whatever purpose it is intended to answer, it has been effected in a way
disgraceful to any national body, except such a body as the Convention;
and, though it be easy to perceive the cruelty of such a measure, yet as,
perhaps, its injustice may not strike you so forcibly as if you had had
the same opportunities of investigating it as I have, I will endeavour to
explain, as well as I can, the circumstances that render it so peculiarly
aggravated.

I need not remind you, that no order is of very modern foundation, nor
that the present century has, in a great degree, exploded the fashion of
compounding for sins by endowing religious institutions. Thus,
necessarily, by the great change which has taken place in the expence of
living, many establishments that were poorly endowed must have become
unable to support themselves, but for the efforts of those who were
attached to them. It is true, that the rent of land has increased as its
pro