With regard to the estates possessed by bishops and canons and commendatory abbots, I cannot find out for what reason some landed estates may not be held otherwise than by inheritance.  Can any philosophic spoiler undertake to demonstrate the positive or the comparative evil of having a certain, and that, too, a large, portion of landed property passing in succession through persons 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 destination, in their turn, and on the score of merit, gives to the noblest families renovation and support, to the lowest the means of dignity and elevation; a property, the tenure of which is the performance of some duty, (whatever value you may choose to set upon that duty,) and the character of whose proprietors demands at least an exterior decorum and gravity of manners,—­who are to exercise a generous, but temperate hospitality,—­part of whose income they are to consider as a trust for charity,—­and who, even when they fail in their trust, when they slide from their character, and degenerate into a mere common secular nobleman or gentleman, are in no respect worse than those who may succeed them in their forfeited possessions?  Is it better that estates should be held by those who have no duty than by those who have one? by those whose character and destination point to virtues than by those who have no rule and direction in the expenditure of their estates but their own will and appetite?  Nor are these estates held altogether in the character or with the evils supposed inherent in mortmain.  They pass from hand to hand with a more rapid circulation than any other.  No excess 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 common wealth that there should exist some estates that have a chance of being acquired by other means than the previous acquisition of money.

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This letter is grown to a great length, though it is, indeed, short with regard to the infinite extent of the subject.  Various avocations have from time to time called my mind from the subject.  I was not sorry to give myself leisure to observe whether in the proceedings of the National Assembly I might not find reasons to change or to qualify some of my first sentiments.  Everything has confirmed me more strongly in my first opinions.  It was my original purpose to take a view of the principles of the National Assembly with regard to the great and fundamental establishments, and to compare the whole of what you have substituted in the place of what you have destroyed with the several members of our British Constitution.  But this plan is of greater extent than at first I computed, and I find that you have little desire to take the advantage of any examples.  At present I must content myself with some remarks upon your establishments, reserving for another time what I proposed to say concerning the spirit of our British monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, as practically they exist.