[16] See Athalie, [act i.] scene 2: 

    ’Il faut que sur le trone un roi soit eleve,
    Qui se souvienne un jour qu’au rang de ses ancetres.

You say:  ’I fly with terror and abhorrence even from the altar of Liberty, when I see it stained with the blood of the aged, of the innocent, of the defenceless sex, of the ministers of religion, and of the faithful adherents of a fallen monarch.’  What! have you so little knowledge of the nature of man as to be ignorant that a time of revolution is not the season of true Liberty?  Alas, the obstinacy and perversion of man is such that she is too often obliged to borrow the very arms of Despotism to overthrow him, and, in order to reign in peace, must establish herself by violence.  She deplores such stern necessity, but the safety of the people, her supreme law, is her consolation.  This apparent contradiction between the principles of liberty and the march of revolutions; this spirit of jealousy, of severity, of disquietude, of vexation, indispensable from a state of war between the oppressors and oppressed, must of necessity confuse the ideas of morality, and contract the benign exertion of the best affections of the human heart.  Political virtues are developed at the expense of moral ones; and the sweet emotions of compassion, evidently dangerous when traitors are to be punished, are too often altogether smothered.  But is this a sufficient reason to reprobate a convulsion from which is to spring a fairer order of things?  It is the province of education to rectify the erroneous notions which a habit of oppression, and even of resistance, may have created, and to soften this ferocity of character, proceeding from a necessary suspension of the mild and social virtues; it belongs to her to create a race of men who, truly free, will look upon their fathers as only enfranchised.[17]

[17]

     Dieu l’a fait remonter par la main de ses pretres: 
     L’a tire par leurs mains de l’oubli du tombeau,
     Et de David eteint rallume le flambeau.’

The conclusion of the same speech applies so strongly to the present period that I cannot forbear transcribing it: 

     ’Daigne, daigne, mon Dieu, sur Mathan, et sur elle
     Repandre cet esprit d’imprudence et d’erreur,
     De la chute des rois funeste avant-coureur!’

I proceed to the sorrow you express for the fate of the French priesthood.  The measure by which that body was immediately stripped of part of its possessions, and a more equal distribution enjoined of the rest, does not meet with your Lordship’s approbation.  You do not question the right of the Nation over ecclesiastical wealth; you have voluntarily abandoned a ground which you were conscious was altogether untenable.  Having allowed this right, can you question the propriety of exerting it at that particular period?  The urgencies of the State were such as required the immediate