Kings will be tyrants from policy when subjects are rebels
from principle.
When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken away, the loss
cannot possibly be estimated. From that moment we have no compass to
govern us; nor can we know distinctly to what port we steer. Europe,
undoubtedly, taken in a mass, was in a flourishing condition the day
on which your revolution was completed. How much of that prosperous
state was owing to the spirit of our old manners and opinions is not
easy to say; but as such causes cannot be indifferent in their
operation, we must presume that on the whole their operation was
beneficial.
We are but too apt to consider things in the state in which we
find them, without sufficiently adverting to the causes by which
they have been produced and possibly may be upheld. Nothing is more
certain than that our manners, our civilization, and all the good
things which are connected with manners and with civilization have, in
this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles and
were, indeed, the result of both combined: I mean the spirit of a
gentleman and the spirit of religion. The nobility and the clergy, the
one by profession, the other by patronage, kept learning in existence,
even in the midst of arms and confusions, and whilst governments
were rather in their causes than formed. Learning paid back what it
received to nobility and to priesthood, and paid it with usury, by
enlarging their ideas and by furnishing their minds.
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