The monks are lazy. Be it so. Suppose them no otherwise
employed than by singing in the choir. They are as usefully employed
as those who neither sing nor say; as usefully even as those who
sing upon the stage. They are as usefully employed as if they worked
from dawn to dark in the innumerable servile, degrading, unseemly,
unmanly, and often most unwholesome and pestiferous occupations to
which by the social economy so many wretches are inevitably doomed. If
it were not generally pernicious to disturb the natural course of
things and to impede in any degree the great wheel of circulation
which is turned by the strangely-directed labor of these unhappy
people, I should be infinitely more inclined forcibly to rescue them
from their miserable industry than violently to disturb the tranquil
repose of monastic quietude. Humanity, and perhaps policy, might
better justify me in the one than in the other. It is a subject on
which I have often reflected, and never reflected without feeling from
it. I am sure that no consideration, except the necessity of
submitting to the yoke of luxury and the despotism of fancy, who in
their own imperious way will distribute the surplus product of the
soil, can justify the toleration of such trades and employments in a
well-regulated state. But for this purpose of distribution, it seems
to me that the idle expenses of monks are quite as well directed as
the idle expenses of us lay-loiterers.
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