ftep was taken? Did the affembly, on becoming fenfible of the inevitable ill effects of their projected fale, revert to the offers of the clergy? No distress could oblige them to travel in a course which was disgraced by any appearance of justice. Giving over all hopes from a general immediate fale, another project feems to have fucceeded. They proposed to take stock in exchange for the church lands. In that project great difficulties arofe in equalizing the objects to be exchanged. Other obftacles alfo prefented themselves, which threw them back again upon fome project of fale. The municipalities had taken an alarm. They would not hear of transferring the whole plunder of the kingdom to the stock-holders in Paris. Many of those municipalities had been (upon fyftem) reduced to the most deplorable indigence. Money was no where to be feen. They were therefore led to the point that was fo ardently defired. They panted for a currency of any kind which might revive their perishing industry. The municipalities were then to be admitted to a share in the fpoil, which evidently rendered the first scheme (if ever it had been feriously entertained) altogether impracticable. Public exigencies preffed upon all fides. The minifter of finance reiterated his call for fupply with a most urgent, anxious, and boding voice. Thus preffed on all fides, inftead of the first plan of converting their bankers into bishops and abbots, inftead of paying the old debt, they contracted a new debt, at 3 per cent. creating a new paper currency, founded on an eventual fale of the church lands. They iffued

this

this paper currency to fatisfy in the first instance chiefly the demands made upon them by the Bank of discount, the great machine, or paper-mill, of their fictitious wealth.

The spoil of the church was now become the only refource of all their operations in finance; the vital principle of all their politics; the fole fecurity for the existence of their power. It was neceffary by all, even the most violent means, to put every individual on the fame bottom, and to bind the nation in one guilty intereft to uphold this act, and the authority of those by whom it was done. In order to force the moft reluctant into a participation of their pillage, they rendered their paper circulation compulfory in all payments. Those who confider the general tendency of their schemes to this one object as a centre ; and a centre from which afterwards all their meafures radiate, will not think that I dwell too long upon this part of the proceedings of the national affembly.

To cut off all appearance of connexion between the crown and public juftice, and to bring the whole under implicit obedience to the dictators in Paris, the old independent judicature of the parliaments, with all its merits, and all its faults, was wholly abolifhed. Whilft the parliaments exifted, it was evident that the people might fome time or other come to refort to them, and rally under the standard of their antient laws. It became however a matter of confideration that the magiftrates and officers, in the courts now abolished, had purchased their places at a very high rate, for which, as well as for the

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duty

1

duty they performed, they received but a very low return of intereft. Simple confifcation is a boon only for the clergy; to the lawyers fome appearances of equity are to be obferved; and they are to receive compenfation to an immenfe amount. Their compenfation becomes part of the national debt, for the liquidation of which there is the one exhauftless fund. The lawyers are to obtain their compenfation in the new church paper, which is to march with the new principles of judicature and legislature. The difmiffed magiftrates are to take their fhare of martyrdom with the ecclefiaftics, or to receive their own property from fuch a fund and in fuch a manner, as all thofe, who have been feasoned with the antient principles of jurifprudence, and had been the fworn guardians of property, must look upon with horror. Even the clergy are to receive their miferable allowance out of the depreciated paper which is ftamped with the indelible character of facrilege, and with the fymbols of their own ruin, or they muft farve. So violent an outrage upon credit, property, and liberty, as this compulsory paper currency, has feldom been exhibited by the alliance of bankruptcy and tyranny, at any time, or in any nation.

In the courfe of all thefe operations, at length comes out the grand arcanum;-that in reality, and in a fair fenfe, the lands of the church (fo far as any thing certain can be gathered from their proceedings) are not to be fold at all. By the late refolutions of the national affembly, they are indeed to be delivered to the highest bidder. But it is to be obferved, that a certain portion only of the purchafe mo

ney

ney is to be laid down. A period of twelve years is to be given for the payment of the reft. The philofophic purchasers are therefore, on payment of a fort of fine, to be put instantly into poffeffion of the estate. It becomes in fome respects a fort of gift to them; to be held on the feudal tenure of zeal to the new eftablishment. This project is evidently to let in a body of purchasers without money. The confequence will be, that these purchafers, or rather grantees, will pay, not only from the rents as they accrue, which might as well be received by the ftate, but from the spoil of the materials of buildings, from wafte in woods, and from whatever money, by hands habituated to the gripings of ufury, they can wring from the miferable peasant. He is to be delivered over to the mercenary and arbitrary difcretion of men, who will be ftimulated to every fpecies of extortion by the growing demands on the growing profits of an eftate held under the precarious fettlement of a new political system.

When all the frauds, impoftures, violences, rapines, burnings, murders, confifcations, compulfory paper currencies, and every defcription of tyranny and cruelty employed to bring about and to uphold this revolution, have their natural effect, that is, to fhock the moral fentiments of all virtuous and fober minds, the abettors of this philofophic fyftem immediately ftrain their throats in a declamation against the old monarchial government of France. When they have rendered that depofed power fufficiently black, they

N 4

they then proceed in argument, as if all those who difapprove of their new abuses, muft of courfe be partizans of the old; that thofe who reprobate their crude and violent fchemes of liberty ought to be treated as advocates for fervitude. I admit that their neceffities do compel them to this bafe and contemptible fraud. Nothing can reconcile. men to their proceedings and projects but the fuppofition that there is no third option between them, and fome tyranny as odious as can be furnished by the records of hiftory, or by the inven tion of poets. This prattling of theirs hardly deferves the name of fophiftry. It is nothing but plain. impudence. Have thefe gentlemen never heard, in the whole circle of the worlds of theory and practice, of any thing between the defpotifim of the monarch and the defpotifm of the multitude? Have they never heard of a monarchy directed by laws, controlled and balanced by the great hereditary wealth and hereditary dignity of a nation; and both again controlled by à judicious check from the reafon and feeling of the people at large acting by a fuitable and permanent organ? Is it then impoffible that a man may be found who, without criminal ill intention, or pitiable abfurdity, fhall prefer fuch a mixed and tempered government to either of the extremes ; and who may repute that nation to be deftitute of ali wisdom and of all virtue, which, having in its choice to obtain fuch a government with tafe, or rather to confirm it when actually poffeffed, thought proper to commit a thousand crimes, and