of so handsome a declaration, sixteen millions sterling of their paper.  This was manly.  Who, after this masterly stroke, can doubt of their abilities in finance?—­But then, before any other emission of these financial indulgences, they took care at least to make good their original promise.—­If such estimate, either of the value of the estate or the amount of the incumbrances, has been made, it has escaped me.  I never heard of it.

At length they have spoken out, and they have made a full discovery of their abominable fraud in holding out the Church lands as a security for any debts or any service whatsoever.  They rob only to enable them to cheat; but in a very short time they defeat the ends both of the robbery and the fraud, by making out accounts for other purposes, which blow up their whole apparatus of force and of deception.  I am obliged to M. de Calonne for his reference to the document which proves this extraordinary fact:  it had by some means escaped me.  Indeed, it was not necessary to make out my assertion as to the breach of faith on the declaration of the fourteenth of April, 1790.  By a report of their committee it now appears that the charge of keeping up the reduced ecclesiastical establishments, and other expenses attendant on religion, and maintaining the religious of both sexes, retained or pensioned, and the other concomitant expenses of the same nature, which they have brought upon themselves by this convulsion in property, exceeds the income of the estates acquired by it in the enormous sum of two millions sterling annually,—­besides a debt of seven millions and upwards.  These are the calculating powers of imposture!  This is the finance of philosophy!  This is the result of all the delusions held out to engage a miserable people in rebellion, murder, and sacrilege, and to make them prompt and zealous instruments in the ruin of their country!  Never did a state, in any case, enrich itself by the confiscations of the citizens.  This new experiment has succeeded like all the rest.  Every honest mind, every true lover of liberty and humanity, must rejoice to find that injustice is not always good policy, nor rapine the high-road to riches.  I subjoin with pleasure, in a note, the able and spirited observations of M. de Calonne on this subject.[133]

In order to persuade the world of the bottomless resource of ecclesiastical confiscation, the Assembly have proceeded to other confiscations of estates in offices, which could not be done with any common color without being compensated out of this grand confiscation of landed property.  They have thrown upon this fund, which was to show a surplus disengaged of all charges, a new charge, namely, the compensation to the whole body of the disbanded judicature, and of all suppressed offices and estates:  a charge which I cannot ascertain, but which unquestionably amounts to many French millions.  Another of the new charges is an annuity of four hundred