We may have the same geographical
situation, but another country; as we may have the same country in
another soil. The place that determines our duty to our country is a
social, civil relation.
ECCLESIASTICAL CONFISCATION.
The confiscators truly have made some allowance to their victims from
the scraps and fragments of their own tables, from which they have
been so harshly driven, and which have been so bountifully spread for
a feast to the harpies of usury. But to drive men from independence
to live on alms is itself great cruelty. That which might be a
tolerable condition to men in one state of life, and not habituated
to other things, may, when all these circumstances are altered, be a
dreadful revolution; and one to which a virtuous mind would feel pain
in condemning any guilt, except that which would demand the life of
the offender. But to many minds this punishment of DEGRADATION and
INFAMY is worse than death. Undoubtedly it is an infinite aggravation
of this cruel suffering, that the persons who were taught a double
prejudice in favour of religion, by education and by the place they
held in the administration of its functions, are to receive the
remnants of the property as alms from the profane and impious hands
of those who had plundered them of all the rest; to receive (if they
are at all to receive) not from the charitable contributions of the
faithful, but from the insolent tenderness of known and avowed
atheism, the maintenance of religion, measured out to them on the
standard of the contempt in which it is held; and for the purpose of
rendering those who receive the allowance vile, and of no estimation,
in the eyes of mankind.
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