of infamy and of vengeance, to acquire a little wealth; and that on the other hand, the people should have seen the creation of such houses, more cruel and more degrading than the Bastile, without perceiving the manifest contradiction between the doctrine and the practice of the persons who established them?. It belongs to the State, and not the Monks, to punish offenders against the State.

I could farther wish that the Clergy, having contributed from their superfluity a supply for indigence, the source of so many private vices, would thunder their eloquence against ambition, that fertile source of public and private vice: that they would proscribe the first lessons of it in our schools, into which it has found admission under the name of emulation, and from infancy arms fellow citizens against each other, by instilling into every child this pernicious maxim, "Be the first:" let the preachers of the Gospel inveigh vehemently, in the name of GOD, against the ambition of the Potentates of Europe, which results from the am- | bitious education they procure for their subjects, and which, after having brought an accumulation of misery on their own People, communicates that misery to the Human Race: let those sacred Ministers of Peace attack the sacrilegious Laws of War; let themselves desist from the practice of decorating our Temples dedicated to Charity, with banners won by shedding the blood of Nations; let them strenuously oppose the slavery of the Negroes, who are our brethren by the Laws of Nature and of Religion; let them withhold their benediction from vessels employed in this infamous

traffic,

traffic, as well as from the standards around which our sanguinary soldiers assemble; let them refuse their ministrations to every one who contributes toward the increase of human wretchedness; let them make the reply to the Powers who would engage them to consecrate the instruments of their politics, which the priestess Theano made to the People of Athens when they tried to persuade her to pronounce a malediction upon Alcibiades, though convicted of having profaned the mysteries of Ceres: "I am a Priestess to offer up pray"ers and implore blessings, not to execrate and "devote to destruction."

Let our Priests then say to ambitious Potentates: "We are not sent to excite men to the furies of war, but to concord, love and peace; not to pronounce a blessing on ships of war, on vessels

"

engaged in the Slave-trade, on regiments; but, "after the example of the blessed JESUS, on little "children, on marriages and on harmless festivity."

Thus the French Clergy, by taking a lively interest in the condition of suffering humanity, will render themselves dear to the men of all Nations. They will have the satisfaction of beholding their religious Empire revive in the hearts of the People, as in the early ages when the Gospel was first preached, and, when, speaking in the name of the GOD of Peace, they made tyrants tremble.

WISHES FOR THE NOBILITY.

MAY that Nobility, who in barbarous ages presented to the People models of heroism in times of war, and of urbanity in times of Peace, exhibit to them a pattern of every patriotic virtue in an age of illumination! It is my earnest wish that they should not only march, as heretofore, at the head of their warriors, to defend them against external enemies, or to protect the weaker of them from the oppression of domestic foes, as in the days of ancient chivalry, but that, rising to the patrician greatness of old Rome, they would adopt into their bosom the plebeian families who may render themselves illustrious by virtue. Thus were the Catos and the Scipios adopted into noble families. May. they farther, after the example of the Roman Nobility, ally themselves with the people by the bonds of marriage! Augustus, in the zenith of his glory, gave his only daughter Julia in marriage to the plebeian Agrippa; and Tiberius on the throne, married his grand-daughter Drusilla, and daughter of Germanicus, to Lucius Cassius, "of an ancient and "honourable plebeian extraction," to use the expression of Tacitus. Our own Kings themselves have often contracted similar marriages. Henry IV. who valued himself on being the first Gentleman in his kingdom, took to wife Mary de Medicis, who descended from a family who were once merchants at Florence. The Nobility in our days, it is true, are coming nearer to the people by forming plebeian alliances, but if they were more frequent, and had not fortune merely for their ob

ject,

ject, we should not see so many females of noble birth languishing in a state of celibacy.

Wherever the People is despised the Nobility is unhappy. It is the resentment of the People which fosters among the higher orders the spirit of civil war and of duelling. Look at the eternal discords of the Polish Nobility: look at the ancient feuds of the Barons of England, before liberty had raised the people nearer to their level; and at those of our own Princess and Dukes prior to Louis XIV. who by the exercise of his despotism reduced all his subjects to nearly the same standard.

Wherever the People is undervalued, the Nobility is of inferior consideration. Where the former is in a state of vassalage, the latter sinks into a menial condition. Look at Poland, where the lackeys and domestics of the meanest station in great houses are of the Order of Nobility. What Frenchman of noble birth would not at this day prefer the service of the People in our Monarchical Government, to the service of a Grandee, as in the time of the feudal despotism? Who would not a thousand times rather be a Peer of Great Britain, living with his farmers, and balancing in the House of Lords, or even in that of Commons, the interests of his Country and the destiny of the Globe, than an Indian Nair, whom one of the commonalty dares not so much as touch, under pain of death, but who is himself obliged to sacrifice his conscience and his life to the caprices of the despot who keeps him in pay?

O ye Nobles, would you wish to exalt your own order, raise the order of the People! It was the great

ness of the Roman people which constituted the Majesty of the Roman Senate. The higher a pedestal is, the loftier is the column reared upon it; the closer the union between the column and it's pedestal, the greater is it's solidity.

It is very remarkable that the Romans conferred the most illustrious marks of distinction only on those of their citizens who had merited well of the People."The Civic Crown," says Pliny, “was "deemed more honourable, and communicated

higher privileges than the Mural, the Obsidional "and Naval Crowns, because there is more glory "in saving a single citizen than in storming cities "and gaining battles."

Those marks of distinction, kept in reserve for the servants of the people alone, were, in the times of the Republic, the real causes of the grandeur of the Roman Senate, because à People is to be served by virtues alone, but they became the causes of her decline, when, under the Emperors, they were be- 1 stowed on those only who had deserved well of the Court, because Courtiers are to be served only by

vices.

As we live in an age in which the members' of the political body are still sound parts, under a Chief resembling Marcus Aurelius, I feel myself drawn into a train of wishing that we might in some measure acquire a resemblance to the ancient Romans.' I could wish then, in order to unite the Nobility with the People, and the People with the Nobility, that an order of Chivalry might be instituted, in imitation of the Civic Crown. This order should be conferred on every citizen who might have de