Nec vero solum ipsa cecidit, sed etiam reliquam Graeciam evertit
contagionibus malorum, quae a Lacedaemoniis profectae manarunt
latius".- After speaking of the conduct of the model of true patriots,
Aratus of Sicyon, which was in a very different spirit, he says,
"Sic par est agere cum civibus; non ut bis jam vidimus, hastam in foro
ponere et bona civium voci subjicere praeconis. At ille Graecus (id
quod fuit sapientis et praestantis viri) omnibus consulendum esse
putavit: eaque est summa ratio et sapientia boni civis, commoda civium
non divellere, sed omnes eadem aequitate continere." Cic. Off. 1. 2.
*(2) See two books entitled, Einige Originalschriften des
Illuminatenordens.- System und Folgen des Illuminatenordens.
Munchen, 1787.
But it will be argued that this confiscation in France ought not
to alarm other nations. They say it is not made from wanton
rapacity, that it is a great measure of national policy adopted to
remove an extensive, inveterate, superstitious mischief. It is with
the greatest difficulty that I am able to separate policy from
justice. Justice itself is the great standing policy of civil society,
and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under
the suspicion of being no policy at all.
When men are encouraged to go into a certain mode of life by the
existing laws, and protected in that mode as in a lawful occupation;
when they have accommodated all their ideas and all their habits to
it; when the law had long made their adherence to its rules a ground
of reputation, and their departure from them a ground of disgrace
and even of penalty- I am sure it is unjust in legislature, by an
arbitrary act, to offer a sudden violence to their minds and their
feelings, forcibly to degrade them from their state and condition
and to stigmatize with shame and infamy that character and those
customs which before had been made the measure of their happiness
and honor.
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