the insidious offerings of compulsive charity. They enforced their
right. They took from the clergy a large share of their wealth, and
applied it to the alleviation of the national misery. Experience shows
daily the wise employment of the ample provision which yet remains to
them. While you reflect on the vast diminution which some men's fortunes
must have undergone, your sorrow for these individuals will be
diminished by recollecting the unworthy motives which induced the bulk
of them to undertake the office, and the scandalous arts which enabled
so many to attain the rank and enormous wealth which it has seemed
necessary to annex to the charge of a Christian pastor. You will rather
look upon it as a signal act of justice that they should thus
unexpectedly be stripped of the rewards of their vices and their crimes.
If you should lament the sad reverse by which the hero of the
necklace[18] has been divested of about 1,300,000 livres of annual
revenue, you may find some consolation that a part of this prodigious
mass of riches is gone to preserve from famine some thousands of curés,
who were pining in villages unobserved by Courts.

[18] Prince de Rohan.

I now proceed to principles. Your Lordship very properly asserts that
'the liberty of man in a state of society consists in his being subject
to no law but the law enacted by the general will of the society to
which he belongs.' You approved of the object which the French had in
view when, in the infancy of the Revolution, they were attempting to
destroy arbitrary power, and to erect a temple to Liberty on its
remains. It is with surprise, then, that I find you afterwards presuming
to dictate to the world a servile adoption of the British constitution.
It is with indignation I perceive you 'reprobate' a people for having
imagined happiness and liberty more likely to flourish in the open field