aged, of the
innocent, of the defenceless sex, of the ministers of religion, and of
the faithful adherents of a fallen monarch.' What! have you so little
knowledge of the nature of man as to be ignorant that a time of
revolution is not the season of true Liberty? Alas, the obstinacy and
perversion of man is such that she is too often obliged to borrow the
very arms of Despotism to overthrow him, and, in order to reign in
peace, must establish herself by violence. She deplores such stern
necessity, but the safety of the people, her supreme law, is her
consolation. This apparent contradiction between the principles of
liberty and the march of revolutions; this spirit of jealousy, of
severity, of disquietude, of vexation, indispensable from a state of war
between the oppressors and oppressed, must of necessity confuse the
ideas of morality, and contract the benign exertion of the best
affections of the human heart. Political virtues are developed at the
expense of moral ones; and the sweet emotions of compassion, evidently
dangerous when traitors are to be punished, are too often altogether
smothered. But is this a sufficient reason to reprobate a convulsion
from which is to spring a fairer order of things? It is the province of
education to rectify the erroneous notions which a habit of oppression,
and even of resistance, may have created, and to soften this ferocity of
character, proceeding from a necessary suspension of the mild and social
virtues; it belongs to her to create a race of men who, truly free, will
look upon their fathers as only enfranchised.[17]

[17]

Dieu l'a fait remonter par la main de ses pretres:
L'a tire par leurs mains de l'oubli du tombeau,
Et de David eteint rallume le flambeau.'

The conclusion of the same speech applies so strongly to the present
period that I cannot forbear transcribing it:

'Daigne, daigne, mon Dieu, sur Mathan, et sur elle
Repandre _cet esprit d'imprudence et d'erreur,
De la chute des rois funeste avant-coureur_!'

I proceed to the sorrow you express for the fate of the French
priesthood. The measure by which that body was immediately stripped of
part of its possessions, and a more equal distribution enjoined of the
rest, does not meet with your Lordship's approbation. You do not
question the right of the Nation over ecclesiastical wealth; you have
voluntarily abandoned a ground which you were conscious was altogether
untenable. Hav