But, for the reasons I have already given you, I think it
cannot last very long.
PRINCIPLE OF CHURCH PROPERTY.
Why should the expenditure of a great landed property, which is a
dispersion of the surplus product of the soil, appear intolerable to
you or to me, when it takes its course through the accumulation of
vast libraries, which are the history of the force and weakness of
the human mind; through great collections of ancient records, medals,
and coins, which attest and explain laws and customs; through
paintings and statues, that, by imitating nature, seem to extend the
limits of creation; through grand monuments of the dead, which
continue the regards and connections of life beyond the grave;
through collections of the specimens of nature, which become a
representative assembly of all the classes and families of the world,
that by disposition facilitate, and, by exciting curiosity, open the
avenues to science? If by great permanent establishments, all these
objects of expense are better secured from the inconstant sport of
personal caprice and personal extravagance, are they worse than if
the same tastes prevailed in scattered individuals? Does not the
sweat of the mason and carpenter, who toil in order to partake the
sweat of the peasant, flow as pleasantly and as salubriously, in the
construction and repair of the majestic edifices of religion, as in
the painted booths and sordid sties of vice and luxury; as honourably
and as profitably in repairing those sacred works, which grow hoary
with innumerable years, as on the momentary receptacles of transient
voluptuousness; in opera-houses, and brothels, and gaming-houses, and
club-houses, and obelisks in the Champ de Mars? Is the surplus
product of the olive and the vine worse employed in the frugal
sustenance of persons, whom the fictions of a pious imagination raise
to dignity by construing in the service of God, than in pampering the
innumerable multitude of those who are degraded by being made useless
domestics, subservient to the pride of man? Are the decorations of
temples an expenditure less worthy a wise man, than ribbons, and
laces, and national cockades, and petites maisons, and petits
soupers, and all the innumerable fopperies and follies, in which
opulence sports away the burthen of its superfluity?
We tolerate even these; not from love of them, but for fear of worse.
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