d not secure men from tyranny and sedition by rooting out
of the mind the principles to which these fraudulent pretexts apply? If
you did, you would root out everything that is valuable in the human
breast. As these are the pretexts, so the ordinary actors and
instruments in great public evils are kings, priests, magistrates,
senates, parliaments, national assemblies, judges, and captains. You
would not cure the evil by resolving that there should be no more
monarchs, nor ministers of state, nor of the Gospel,--no interpreters of
law, no general officers, no public councils. You might change the
names: the things in some shape must remain. A certain _quantum_ of
power must always exist in the community, in some hands, and under some
appellation. Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to
names,--to the causes of evil, which are permanent, not to the
occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which
they appear. Otherwise you will be wise historically, a fool in
practice. Seldom have two ages the same fashion in their pretexts, and
the same modes of mischief. Wickedness is a little more inventive.
Whilst you are discussing fashion, the fashion is gone by. The very same
vice assumes a new body. The spirit transmigrates; and, far from losing
its principle of life by the change of its appearance, it is renovated
in its new organs with the fresh vigor of a juvenile activity. It walks
abroad, it continues its ravages, whilst you are gibbeting the carcass
or demolishing the tomb. You are terrifying yourselves with ghosts and
apparitions, whilst your house is the haunt of robbers. It is thus with
all those who, attending only to the shell and husk of history, think
they are waging war with intolerance, pride, and cruelty, whilst, under
color of abhorring the ill principles of antiquated parties, they are
authorizing and feeding the same odious vices in different factions, and
perhaps in worse.

Your citizens of Paris formerly had lent themselves as the ready
instruments to slaughter the followers of Calvin, at the infamous
massacre of St. Bartholomew. What should we say to those who could think
of retaliating on the Parisians of this day the abominations and horrors
of that time? They are, indeed, brought to abhor _that_ massacre.
Ferocious as they are, it is not difficult to make them dislike it,
because the politicians and fashionable teachers have no interest in
giving their passions exactly the