They say that ecclesiastics are fictitious persons, creatures
of the state, whom at pleasure they may destroy, and of course limit
and modify in every particular; that the goods they possess are not
properly theirs but belong to the state which created the fiction; and
we are therefore not to trouble ourselves with what they may suffer in
their natural feelings and natural persons on account of what is
done toward them in this their constructive character. Of what
import is it under what names you injure men and deprive them of the
just emoluments of a profession, in which they were not only permitted
but encouraged by the state to engage, and upon the supposed certainty
of which emoluments they had formed the plan of their lives,
contracted debts, and led multitudes to an entire dependence upon
them?
You do not imagine, Sir, that I am going to compliment this
miserable distinction of persons with any long discussion. The
arguments of tyranny are as contemptible as its force is dreadful. Had
not your confiscators, by their early crimes, obtained a power which
secures indemnity to all the crimes of which they have since been
guilty or that they can commit, it is not the syllogism of the
logician, but the lash of the executioner, that would have refuted a
sophistry which becomes an accomplice of theft and murder. The
sophistic tyrants of Paris are loud in their declamations against
the departed regal tyrants, who in former ages have vexed the world.
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