It is a sour, malignant, envious
disposition, without taste for the reality, or for any image or
representation of virtue, that sees with joy the unmerited fall of what
had long flourished in splendour and in honour. I do not like to see
anything destroyed; any void produced in society; any ruin on the face
of the land. It was therefore with no disappointment or dissatisfaction
that my inquiries and observations did not present to me any
incorrigible vices in the noblesse of France, or any abuse which could
not be removed by a reform very short of abolition. Your noblesse did
not deserve punishment: but to degrade is to punish.
It was with the same satisfaction I found that the result of my inquiry
concerning your clergy was not dissimilar. It is no soothing news to my
ears, that great bodies of men are incurably corrupt. It is not with
much credulity I listen to any when they speak evil of those whom they
are going to plunder. I rather suspect that vices are feigned or
exaggerated when profit is looked for in their punishment. An enemy is a
bad witness; a robber is a worse. Vices and abuses there were
undoubtedly in that order, and must be. It was an old establishment, and
not frequently revised. But I saw no crimes in the individuals that
merited confiscation of their substance, nor those cruel insults and
degradations, and that unnatural persecution, which have been
substituted in the place of meliorating regulation.
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