I hear that the auguft perfon, who was the principal object of our preach er's triumph, though he fupported himself, felt much on that fhameful bccafion. As a man, it became him to feel for his wife and his children, and the faithful guards of his perfon, that were maffacred in cold blood about him; as a prince, it became him to feel for the ftrange and frightful transformation of his civilized fubjects, and to be more grieved for them than folicitous for himfelf. It derogates little from his fortitude, while it adds infinitely to the honour of his humanity. I am very forry to fay it, very forry indeed, that fach perfonages are in a fituation in which it is not unbecoming in us to praife the virtues of the great. Reflections on the Affair at Versailles on the 6th of October 1789. 383 to many kings and emperors, with the dauphinefs, at Verfailles; and the tender age of royal infants, infen- furely never lighted on this orb, fible only through infancy and inno- which the hardly feemed to touch, a cence of the cruel outrages to which more delightful vifion. I faw her their parents were expofed, instead of juft above the horizon, decorating and being a fubject of exultation, adds cheering the elevated fphere the juft not a little to my fenfibility on that began to move in, glittering like moft melancholy occafion. the morning-ftar, full of life, and fplendor, and joy. Oh what a revolution! and what an heart muft İ have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream that, when the added titles of veneration to thofe of enthu fiaftic, diftant, refpectful love, that the fhould ever be obliged to carry the fharp antidote against difgrace concealed in that bofom; little did I dream that I fhould have lived to fee fuch difafters fallen upon her in a na tion of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thoufand fwords must have leaped from their fcabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with infult.-But the age of chi valry is gone.-That of fophifters, œconomists, and calculators. has fucceeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more, fhall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and fex, that proud fubmiffion, that dignified obedience, that fubordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in fervitude itfelf, the fpirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap de fence of nations, the nurfe of manly fentiment and heroic enterprize is gone! It is gone, that fenfibility of principle, that chaltity of honour, which felt a ftain like a wound, which infpired courage whilft it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself loft halt its evil, by lofing all its groffnefs. I hear, and I rejoice to hear, that the great lady, the other object of the triumph, has borne that day (one is interested that beings made for fuffering fhould fuffer well) and that the bears all the fucceeding days, that the bears the imprisonment of her husband, and her own captivity, and the exile of her friends, and the infulting adu lation of addreffes, and the whole weight of her accumulated wrongs, with a ferene patience, in a manner fuited to her rank and race, and becoming the offspring of a fovereign diftinguished for her piety and her courage; that like her the has lofty fentiments; that the feels with the dignity of a Roman matron; that in the laft extremity the wil fave herself from the laft difgrace, and that if the muft fall, the will fall by no ignoble This mixed fyftem of opinion and fentiment had its origin in the ancient chivalry; and the principle, though varied in its appearance by the vary, ing ftate of human affairs, fubfifted and general as fuch, and without diftin&t views, is to be regarded as romance and folly. Regicide, and particide, and facrilege, are but fictions of fuperftition, corrupting jurisprudence by deftroying its fimplicity. The mur der of a king, or a queen, or a bishop, or a father, are only common homicide; and if the people are by any chance, or in any way gainers by it, a fort of homicide much the most pardonable, and into which we ought not to make too fevere a fcrutiny. On the fcheme of this barbarous philofophy, which is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understand and influenced through a long fuccef fion of generations, even to the time we live in. If it should ever be totally extingu fhed, the lofs I fear will be great. It is this which has given its character to modern Europe. It is this which has diftinguished it under all its forms of government. and diftinguished it to its advantage, from the ftates of Afia, and poflibly from thofe ftates which flourished in the moft brilliant periods of the antique world. It was this, which, without confounding ranks, had produced a noble equality, and handed it down through all the gradations of focial life. It was this opinion which mi-ings, and which is as void of folid tigated kings into companions, and wildom, as it is deftitute of all tafte Taifed private men to be fellows like and elegance, laws are fupported only kings. Without force or oppofition, by their own terrors, and by the con. it fubdued the fiercenefs of pride and cern, which each individual may find power; it obliged fovereigns to fub- in them, from his own private ĺpecumit to the foft collar of focial esteem, lations, or can spare to them from his compelled ftern authority to fubmit to own private interefts. In the groves elegance, and gave a domination van of their academy, at the end of every quilher of laws, to be fubdued by vifto, you fee nothing but the gallows. Nothing is left that engages the affections on the part of the commonwealth. On the principles of this mechanic philosophy, our inftitutions can never be embodied, if I may ufe the expreffion, in perfons; fo as to create in us love, veneration, admiration, or attachment. But that fort of reafon which banishes the affections is incapable of filling their place. Thefe public affections, combined with manners, are required sometimes as fupplèments, fometimes as correctives, always as aids to law. The precept given by a wife man, as well as a great critic, for the construction of poems, is equally true as to ftates. Non fa tis eft pulchra effe poemata, dulcia funto There ought to be a fyftem of manners in every nation which a wellformed mind would be difpofed to relifh. To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely. manners. But now all is to be changed All the pleafing illufions, which made power gentle, and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different fhades of life, and which by a bland affimila. tion, incorporated into politics the fentiments which beautify and foften private fociety, are to be diffolved by this new conquering empire of light and reafon. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the fuperadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the underftanding ratifies, as neceffary to cover the defects of our naked fhivering nature, and to raife it to dignity in our own eftimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, abfurd, and antiquated fashion. On this fcheme of things, a king is but a man; a queen is but a woman; a woman is but an animal; and an animal not of the higheft or der. All homage paid to the fex in But power, of fome kind or other, will furvive the fhock in which manners and opinions perifh; and it will find find other and worfe means for its fupport. The ufurpation which, in order to fubvert antient inftitutions, has deftroyed antient principles, will hold power by arts fimilar to thofe by which it has acquired it. When the old feudal and chivalrous fpirit of Fealty, which, by freeing kings from fear, freed both kings and fubjects from the precautions of tyranny, fhall be extinct in the minds of men, plots and affaffinations will be anticipated by preventive murder and preventive confifcation, and that long roll of grim and bloody maxims, which form the political code of all power, not ftanding on its own honour, and the honour of thofe who are to obey it. Kings will be tyrants from policy when fubjects are rebels from principle. 1 On the Religious Establishment of England. HE majority of the people of England, far from thinking a religious national eftablishment unlawful, hardly think it lawful to be with out one. In France you are wholly miftaken if you do not believe us a bove all other things attached to it, and beyond all other nations; and when this people has acted unwifely and unjustifiably in its favour (as in fome inftances they have done moft certainly) in their very errors you will at leaft difcover their zeal. This principle runs through the whole fyftem of their polity. They do not confider their church establish ment as convenient, but as effential to their state; not as a thing heterogeneous and feparable; fomething added for accommodation; what they may either keep up or lay afide, according to their temporary ideas of convenience. They confider it as the foundation of their whole conftitution, with which, and with every part of which, it holds an indiffoluble union. Church and ftate are ideas infeparable in their, minds, and fcarcely is the one ever mentioned without mentioning the other. Our education is fo formed as to confirm and fix this impreffion. Our education is in a manner wholly in the hands of ecclefiaftics, and in all ftagès from infancy to manhood. Even By So tenacious are we of the old ecclefiaftical modes and fashions of inftitution, that very little alteration has been made in them fince the fourteenth or fifteenth century; adhering in this particular, as in all things elle, to our old fettled maxim, never entirely nor at once to depart from antiquity. We found thefe old inftitutions, on the whole, favourable to morality and difcipline; and we thought nobility, independent. they were fufcept ble of amendment, without altering the ground. We thought that they were capable of receiving and meliorating, and above all of preferving the accellions of Icience and literature, as the order of Providence fhould fucceffively produce them. And after all, with this Gothic and monkish education (for fuch it is in the ground-work) we may put in our claim to as ample and as, early a fhare in all the improvements in fcience, in arts, and in literature, which have illuminated and adorned the modern world, as any other na tion in Europe; we think one main caufe of this improvement was our not defpifing the patrimony of knowledge which was left us by our forefa thers. It is from our attachment to à church establishment that the English nation did not think it wife to entruft that great fundamental intereft of the whole to what they truft no part of their civil or military public Service, that is to the unsteady and precarious contribution of individuals. They go further. They certainly Dever have fuffered and never will fuffer the fixed estate 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 difficulties may fometimes be pretended for political purposes, and are in fact often brought on by the extravagance, negligence, aud 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 state. 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 #heir church, like their king and their 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 instruction of the ignorant, they have incorporated and identified the eftate of the church with the mafs of private property, of which the state is not the proprietor, either for ufe or dominion, but the guardiad only and the regulator. They have ordained that the provision of this eftablifhment might be as ftable as the earth on which it ftands, and should not fluctuate with the Euripus of funds and actions. The men of England, the men, I mean, of light, and leading in Eng. land, whofe wifdom (if they have any) is open and direct, would be afhamed, as of a filly deceitful trick, to profefs any religion in name, which by their proceedings they appeared to Contemn. If by their conduct (the only 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 appre hend that by fuch a conduct they would defeat the politic purpofe 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 ftatefmen of this land would indeed firft provide for the multitude; be-` caufe it is the multitude; and is there fore, as fuch, the first object in the ecclefiaftical institution, and in all in ftitutions. They have been taught, that the circumftance of the gofpel's being preached to the poor, was oné of the great tefts of its true miffion. They think, therefore, that thofe do not believe it, who do not take care it fhould be preached to the poor. But as they know that charity is not confined to any one defcription, but ought to apply itfelf to all men who have wants, they are not deprived of a due and anxious fenfation of pity to the diftreffes of the miferable great. They are not repelled through a faf tidious 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 the contagion of their ill example; from the neceffity of bowing down the ftubborn neck of their pride and ambition to the yoke of moderation and virtue; from a confideration of the fat ftupidity and grofs ignorance concerning what imports men moft to know, which prevails at courts, and at the head of armies, and in fenates, as much as at the loom and in the field. The English people are fatisfied, that to the great the confolations of religion are as neceffary as its inftructions. They too are among the unhappy. They feel perfonal pain and domestic forrow. In thefe they have no privilege, but are fubject to pay their full contingent to the contributions levied on mortality. They want this fovereign balm under their gnawing cares and anxieties, which being lefs converfant about the limited wants of animal life, range without limit, and are diverfified by infinite combipations in the wild and unbounded regions of imagination. Some charitable dole is wanting to thefe, our often very unhappy brethren, to fill the gloomy void that reigns in minds which have nothing on earth to hope or fear; fomething to relieve in the killing languor and over-laboured laffi tude of those who have nothing to do; fomething to excite an appetite to exiftence in the palled fatiety which attends on all pleafures which may be bought, where nature is not left to her own process, where even defire is anticipated, and therefore fruition defeated by meditated schemes and contrivances of delight; and no interval, no obstacle, is interpofed between the wish and the accomplish ment. The people of England know how little influence the teachers of religion are likely to have with the wealthy and powerful of long ftanding, and how much lefs with the newly fortunate, if they appear in a manner no way afforted to thofe with whom they muft affociate, and over whom they muft even exercife, in fome cafes, fomething like an authority. What must they think of that body of teachers, if they fee it in no part above the establishment of their domestic fervants? If the poverty was voluntary, there might be fome difference: Strong inftances of felf-denial operate powerfully on our minds; and a man who has no wants has obtained great freedom and firmnefs, and even dignity. But as the mafs of any defcription of men are but men, and their poverty cannot be voluntary, that difrefpect which attends upon all Lay poverty, will not depart from the Ecclefiaftical. Our provident conftitu tion has therefore taken care that those who are to inftruct prefumptu. ous ignorance, thofe who are to be cenfors over infolent vice, fhould neither incur their contempt, nor Ive upon their alms; nor will it tempt the rich to a neglect of the true medicine of their minds. For thefe reafons, whilft we provide first for the poor, and with a parental folici. tude, we have not relegated religion (like fomething we were afhamed to fhew) to obfcure municipalities or ruftic villages. No! We will have her to exalt her mitred front in courts and parliaments. We will have her mixed throughout the whole mass of life, and blended with all the claffes of fciety. The people of England will fhew to the haughty potentates of the world, and to their talking fophifters, that a free, a generous, an informed |