After destroying all
other genealogies and family distinctions, they invent a sort of
pedigree of crimes. It is not very just to chastise men for the
offenses of their natural ancestors, but to take the fiction of
ancestry in a corporate succession as a ground for punishing men who
have no relation to guilty acts, except in names and general
descriptions, is a sort of refinement in injustice belonging to the
philosophy of this enlightened age. The Assembly punishes men, many,
if not most, of whom abhor the violent conduct of ecclesiastics in
former times as much as their present persecutors can do, and who
would be as loud and as strong in the expression of that sense, if
they were not well aware of the purposes for which all this
declamation is employed.
Corporate bodies are immortal for the good of the members, but not
for their punishment. Nations themselves are such corporations. As
well might we in England think of waging inexpiable war upon all
Frenchmen for the evils which they have brought upon us in the several
periods of our mutual hostilities. You might, on your part, think
yourselves justified in falling upon all Englishmen on account of
the unparalleled calamities brought on the people of France by the
unjust invasions of our Henries and our Edwards. Indeed, we should
be mutually justified in this exterminatory war upon each other,
full as much as you are in the unprovoked persecution of your
present countrymen, on account of the conduct of men of the same
name in other times.
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