with innumerable years, as on the momentary re- Mr.Burke. ceptacles of tranfient voluptuoufnefs; in operahoufes, and brothels, and gaming-houses, and club-houses, and obelisks in the Champ de Mars? Is the furplus product of the olive and the vine worfe employed in the frugal fuftenance of perfons, whom the fictions of a pious imagination raife to dignity by conftruing in the service of God, than in pampering the innumerable multitude of those who are degraded by being made useless domestics fubfervient to the pride of man? Are the decorations of temples an expenditure less worthy a wife man than ribbons, and laces, and national cockades, and petites maifons, and petits foupers, and all the innumerable fopperies and follies in which opulence fports away the burthen of its fuperfluity?

We tolerate even thefe; not from love of them, but for fear of worse. We tolerate them, because property and liberty, to a degree, require that toleration. But why profcribe the other, and furely, in every point of view, the more laudable ufe of eftates? Why, through the violation of all property, through an outrage upon every principle of liberty, forcibly carry them from the better to the worfe?

This comparison between the new individuals and the old corps is made upon a fuppofition that no reform could be made in the latter. But in a queftion of reformation, I always confider corporate bodies, whether fole or confifting of many,

to

Mr. Burke. to be much more fufceptible of a public direction by the power of the state, in the use of their property, and in the regulation of modes and habits of life in their members, than private citizens ever can be, or perhaps ought to be; and this feems to me a very material confideration for those who undertake any thing which merits the name of a politic enterprize.-So far as to the eftates of monafteries.

With regard to the estates poffeffed by bishops and canons, and commendatory abbots, I cannot find out for what reafon fome landed eftates may not be held otherwife than by inheritance. Can any philofophic fpoiler undertake to demonftrate the pofitive or the comparative evil, of having a certain, and that too a large portion of landed property, paffing in fucceffion through perfons whose title to it is, always in theory, and often in fact, an eminent degree of piety, morals, and learning; a property which, by its deftination, in their turn, and on the score of merit, gives to the nobleft families renovation and fupport, to the loweft, the means of dignity and elevation; a property, the tenure of which is the performance of fome duty (whatever value you may choose to set upon that duty), and the character of whofe proprietors demands at least an exterior decorum and gravity of manners; who are to exercise a generous but temperate hofpitality; part of whofe income they are to confider as a truft for charity; and who, even when they fail in their truft, when they flide from

their

their character, and degenerate into a mere com- Mr. Burke. mon fecular nobleman or gentleman, are in no refpect worse than those who may fucceed them in their forfeited poffeffions? Is it better that eftates should be held by thofe who have no duty than by those who have one?-by those whofe character and destination point to virtues, than by those who have no rule and direction in the expenditure of their eftates but their own will and appetite? Nor are thefe eftates held together in the character or with the evils fuppofed inherent in mortmain. They pafs from hand to hand with a more rapid circulation than any other. No excefs is good; and therefore too great a proportion of landed property may be held officially for life; but it does not seem to me of material injury to any commonwealth, that there fhould exift some eftates that have a chance of being acquired by other means than the previous acquifition of money.

It is from our attachment to a church establishment that the English nation did not think it wise to entrust that great fundamental intereft of the whole to what they truft no part of their civil or military public fervice, that is, to the unsteady and precarious contribution of individuals. They go further. They certainly never have fuffered, and never will fuffer, the fixed eftate of the church to be converted into a penfion, to depend on the treasury, and to be delayed, withheld, or perhaps to be extinguished by fifcal difficulties; which C difficulties

VOL. 11.

Mr. Burke. difficulties may fometimes be pretended for po. litical purpofes, and are in fact often brought by the extravagance, negligence, and rapacity of politicians. The people of England think that they have conftitutional motives, as well as religious, against any project of turning their independent clergy into ecclefiaftical penfioners of ftate. They tremble for their liberty, from the influence of a clergy dependent on the crown; they tremble for the public tranquillity, from the diforders of a factious clergy, if it were made to depend upon any other than the crown. They therefore made their church, like their king and their nobility, independent.

From the united confiderations of religion and conftitutional policy, from their opinion of a duty to make a fure provifion for the confolation of the feeble and the inftruction of the ignorant, they have incorporated and identified the eftate of the church with the mass of private property, of which the state is not the proprietor, either for ufe or dominion, but the guardian only and the regulator. They have ordained that the provifion of this eftablishment might be as ftable as the earth on which it ftands, and fhould not fluctuate with the Euripus of funds and actions.

The men of England, the men, I mean, of light and leading in England, whose wisdom (if they have any) is open and direct, would be ashamed, as of a filly deceitful trick, to profess any religion in name, which by their proceedings they ap

peared

peared to contemn. If by their conduct (the only Mr. Burke. language that rarely lies) they feemed to regard the great ruling principle of the moral and the natural world, as a mere invention to keep the vulgar in obedience, they apprehend that by fuch a conduct they would defeat the politic purpose they have in view. They would find it difficult to make others to believe in a fyftem to which they manifeftly gave no credit themselves. The Chriftian statesmen of this land would indeed first pro. vide for the multitude; because it is the multitude; and is therefore, as fuch, the first object in the ecclefiaftical institution, and in all inftitutions. They have been taught, that the circumftance of the gofpel's being preached to the poor, was one of the great tefts of its true miflion. They think, therefore, that those do not believe it, who do not take care it should be preached to the poor. But as they know that charity is not confined to any one description, but ought to apply itself to all men who have wants, they are not deprived of a due and anxious fenfation of pity to the dif treffes of the miferable great. They are not repelled through a faftidious delicacy, at the ftench of their arrogance and prefumption, from a medicinal attention to their mental blotches and running fores. They are fenfible, that religious inftruction is of more confequence to them than to any others; from the greatness of the temptation to which they are expofed; from the important confequences that attend their faults; from

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