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 Summary

CHAPTER 2 Spatial Representations of Weather Data

2.1 The Station Model

2.2 Surface Maps

2.2.1 Isotherms and Temperature Maps
2.2.2 Temperature Fronts
2.2.3 Isobars and Pressure Maps
2.2.4 Highs, Lows, Ridges, and Troughs

2.3 Upper-Level Maps

2.4 Radar

2.5 Satellites
2.5.1 Visible Satellite Images
2.5.2 Infrared Satellite Images
2.5.3 Water Vapor Images
2.5.4 Geostationary Satellites
2.5.5 Polar-Orbiting Satellites
Summary

Appendix 2.1 Important Satellite Cloud Signatures

Appendix 2.2 Contiguous USA Reference Map

CHAPTER 3 Our Atmosphere: Origin, Composition, and Structure

3.1 Aspect

3.2 Composition

8
3.3 Origin and Evolution

3.4 Future Evolution

3.5 Vertical Structure

Summary

Appendix 3.1 Dynamic Equilibrium

CHAPTER 4 Heat and Energy Transfer

4.1 Conduction

4.2 Convection

4.3 Radiation
4.3.1 The Nature of Electromagnetic Radiation
4.3.2 Temperature and Radiation

4.4 Radiative Interactions

4.4.1 Absorption
4.4.2 Reflection
4.4.3 Scattering
4.4.4 Radiative Equilibrium
4.4.5 Selective Absorbers
4.4.6 A Window to the Sky
4.4.7 The Greenhouse Effect

4.5 Radiation and Weather

4.5.1 Heat Imbalance
4.5.2 Seasonal Variations
4.5.3 Diurnal Variations

9
 4.5.4 The Influence of Clouds
4.5.5 Land–Ocean Contrasts
Summary

CHAPTER 5 Water

5.1 The Water Cycle

5.2 Saturation

5.3 Humidity

5.4 Relative Humidity

5.5 Humidity and Temperature

5.5.1 Relative vs. Absolute Humidity
5.5.2 Condensation

5.6 Dew Point Temperature

5.7 Applications of the Dew point Temperature

5.7.1 Surface Weather Maps
5.7.2 Meteograms
5.7.3 Radiosonde Profiles
5.7.4 Back to Relative Humidity
5.7.5 How to Saturate
Summary

CHAPTER 6 Cloud Formation

6.1 Adiabatic Processes

6.2 Adiabatic Processes in the Atmosphere

10
6.3 Dry Adiabatic Lapse Rate

6.4 Relative Humidity

6.5 Moist Adiabatic Lapse Rate

6.6 Orographic Lifting

6.7 Lifting by Convergence

6.8 Frontal Lifting

6.9 Convection
6.9.1 Stable Air
6.9.2 Unstable Air and Thermals
6.9.3 Stable vs. Unstable
6.9.4 Fair-Weather Cumulus Clouds
6.9.5 Conditional Instability and Cumulonimbus
Summary

Appendix 6.1 A Cloud Family Album

CHAPTER 7 Precipitation

7.1 Warm vs. Cold Clouds

7.2 Collision and Coalescence

7.3 Ice-Crystal Growth

7.4 Precipitation Types

Summary

Appendix 7.1 Some Optical Phenomena

11
CHAPTER 8 Wind

8.1 Force and Acceleration

8.2 Pressure Gradient Force

8.3 Sea Breeze and Land Breeze

8.4 Coriolis Force

8.5 Geostrophic Wind

8.6 Gradient Wind

8.7 Surface Winds

8.8 Friction

8.9 Topography
8.9.1 Mountain Breeze and Valley Breeze
8.9.2 Katabatic Winds
Summary

CHAPTER 9 Global Wind Systems

9.1 The Averaged Atmosphere

9.1.1 Surface Temperature
9.1.2 Upper-Level Heights
9.1.3 Surface Pressure
9.1.4 Precipitation

9.2 The Single-Cell Model

9.3 The Three-Cell Model

12
9.4 Some Large-Scale Circulations
9.4.1 West Coast vs. East Coast
9.4.2 Antarctica
9.4.3 The Sahel
9.4.4 The Indian Monsoon
9.4.5 El Niño
Summary

CHAPTER 10 Air Masses, Fronts, and Midlatitude Cyclones

10.1 Air Masses

10.2 Fronts
10.2.1 Stationary Fronts
10.2.2 Cold Fronts
10.2.3 Warm Fronts
10.2.4 Occluded Fronts
10.2.5 Large-Scale Influences on Cyclone Structure, and the
T-bone Model

10.3 Midlatitude Cyclone Development

10.3.1 The Life Cycle of a Midlatitude Cyclone
10.3.2 Vertical Structure of Cyclones
10.3.3 The February 2014 Cyclone
10.3.4 Where do Cyclones Form?
Summary

Appendix 10.1 Southern Hemisphere Midlatitude Cyclones

Appendix 10.2 The Bergen School of Meteorology

CHAPTER 11 Thunderstorms and Tornadoes

13
11.1 Ordinary Thunderstorm

11.2 Severe Thunderstorm

11.3 Lightning and Thunder

11.4 Supercells

11.5 Tornadoes
11.5.1 Description
11.5.2 Tornado Development
11.5.3 Tornado Alley
Summary

CHAPTER 12 Tropical Cyclones

12.1 Facts and Figures

12.2 Tropical Cyclone Structure

12.3 Tropical Cyclone Development

12.3.1 Tropical Easterly Wave
12.3.2 Tropical Depression
12.3.3 Tropical Storm
12.3.4 Tropical Cyclone (Hurricane)
12.3.5 Tropical Cyclone Decay

12.4 Conditions for Tropical Cyclone Development

Summary

CHAPTER 13 Weather Forecasting

13.1 Weather Forecasts and Uncertainty

14
13.2 Prognostic Equations

13.3 Ensemble Forecasting

13.4 Chaos and Weather Prediction

13.5 From Forecast Grids to Reliable Forecast Values

13.6 Making a Forecast

13.6.1 Medium to Long-Range Forecasting
13.6.2 Seasonal Outlook
Summary

CHAPTER 14 Air Pollution

14.1 Pollutants
14.1.1 Gases and Compounds
14.1.2 Particulates
14.1.3 Photochemical Smog

14.2 Wind and Stability

14.3 Large-Scale Patterns

14.4 Topography
Summary

CHAPTER 15 Climate Change and Weather

15.1 Past and Future

15.2 Changing Composition

15.3 A Warmer World

15
15.4 An Altered Water Cycle

15.5 Changing Global Wind Systems

15.6 Midlatitude and Tropical Cyclones in a Warmer World

15.7 Beyond Weather

15.8 The Forecast

Summary

Glossary

References

Credits

Index

16
Preface
Having taught introductory classes on weather many times, we came to see
the need for a textbook on the subject that covers the foundations of
meteorology in a concise, clear, and engaging manner. We set out to create
an informative, cost-effective text that meets the needs of students who
may not have any background in mathematics and science. The result –
Weather: A Concise Introduction – is an introductory meteorology
textbook designed from scratch to provide students with a strong
foundation in the physical, dynamical, and chemical processes taking place
in the atmosphere.
This textbook is unique in that it:

► provides a concise and practical approach to understanding the

atmosphere;
► introduces the basic physical laws early on and then ties them
together with a single case study spanning the book;
► presents weather analysis tools early in the book to allow
instructors to engage in discussions of current weather in tandem
with the basic concepts, thus attracting and retaining student
interest; and
► facilitates students’ learning and understanding of the fundamental
aspects of weather analysis and forecasting, as well as practical
skills, through a careful description of the forecasting process.
Modern methods, such as ensemble forecasting, are central to the
approach.

Features

17
 Case Study: February 2014 Cyclone
The main concepts of the book are illustrated in Chapters 2–13 by a single
case study: a midlatitude cyclone that swept through the eastern half of the
USA between February 19 and 22, 2014. This rich case study serves as a
common thread throughout the book, allowing students to study it from
multiple perspectives. Viewing the storm in the context of different topics
provides a familiar setting for mastering new subjects and for developing
an holistic understanding of midlatitude cyclones.

Boxes on More Advanced Topics

Instructors have the option of including more advanced coverage through
use of boxes that provide insights on various topics. For example, in
Chapter 1, Weather Variables, boxes include an in-depth description of the
four laws of physics that are central to the study of the atmosphere. The
book contains 25 boxes, affording instructors the opportunity to tailor the
level of the material that they present to students in their course.

Appendixes for Additional Coverage

Appendixes at the ends of Chapters 2, 3, 6, 7, and 10 include additional
material on important cloud signatures found in satellite imagery, the
concept of dynamic equilibrium, the cloud classification, some optical
phenomena, southern hemisphere midlatitude cyclones, and the Bergen
School of meteorology.

Summary
18
A summary of key points has been included at the end of each chapter so
that students can, at a glance, confirm that they have understood the
significant take-away facts and ideas.

Figures, Charts, and Maps

Figures have been designed to convey the key concepts in a simple and
self-explanatory way, keeping in mind that clean representations of
information are more helpful to students than complex drawings. Graphs
and maps have been created with real data as much as possible, obtained
from NOAA, NASA, ECMWF, and similar research-quality sources
referenced in the text.

Key Terms and Glossary

The main text contains terms (in bold) that students need to understand and
become familiar with. Many of these terms are listed in the Glossary at the
back of the book. The Glossary allows the reader to look up terms easily
whenever needed and can also be used to review important topics and key
facts.

SI Units
We have consistently used SI units throughout the book, while providing
alternative units whenever possible or relevant.

Organization

19
The first two chapters provide a general overview of key variables and
weather maps used by meteorologists, which facilitates daily weather map
discussions early in the course. We have found that motivating lecture
topics with real-time examples using weather map discussions is a very
effective way to engage students in the lecture material, and it allows
instructors to introduce aspects of weather forecasting at their discretion
well in advance of discussing the material more completely in Chapter 13.
As a result, students are more invested in adding to their knowledge, which
builds systematically toward understanding and predicting weather
systems.
Chapters 3–8 provide foundational material on the composition and
structure of the atmosphere, along with the application of the laws of
classical physics to emphasize and explain the role of energy, water, and
wind in weather systems.
Chapters 9–12 apply the foundational material to understanding the
general circulation of the atmosphere (Chapter 9), midlatitude cyclones
and fronts (Chapter 10), thunderstorms (Chapter 11), and tropical cyclones
(Chapter 12).
Chapters 13–15 build further on the first twelve chapters by applying
the concepts developed to explain processes that affect how weather
forecasts are made (Chapter 13), air pollution (Chapter 14), and climate
change (Chapter 15).

Instructor Resources
A companion website at www.cambridge.org/weather contains PowerPoint
slides of the figures in the text as well as a testbank of questions.

20
 Acknowledgments
We thank: NOAA, NASA, and ECMWF for providing access to data and
images; Reto Knutti, Jan Sedlacek, and Urs Beyerle for providing access
to IPCC data; Rick Kohrs from the University of Wisconsin-Madison for
providing global composite satellite imagery; and Paul Sirvatka from the
College of DuPage for providing radar imagery.
We also thank Ángel Adames, Becky Alexander, Ileana Blade, Peter
Blossey, Michael Diamond, Ralph Foster, Dargan Frierson, Qiang Fu,
Dennis Hartmann, Lynn McMurdie, Paul Markowski, Cliff Mass, Max
Menchaca, Yumin Moon, Scott Powell, Virginia Rux, David Schultz,
Justin Sharp, Brian Smoliak, Mike Warner, Steve Warren, Rachel White,
Darren Wilton, Matt Wyant, and Qi Zhong, as well as 13 anonymous
reviewers, for their help in the preparation of this book.
This project would not have come to life without the support, help,
influence, and constructive criticism from many fellow professors,
teaching assistants, and students. We cannot acknowledge them all here by
name, but we thank them nevertheless for the important role they have
played in shaping the development of this book.

21
Introduction
Why should we study our atmosphere? Why should we learn about the
causes and mechanisms of our weather? Weather affects our daily life: the
clothes we wear (rain coat, shorts, hat, should we take an umbrella or
sunglasses...?), the means of transportation we choose (walk, take a bus,
ride our bike...?), our activities (ski, sail, water our plants, read a book in a
coffee shop...?), and probably more. But beyond our daily concerns,
weather affects society at large. Schools close when snow impedes traffic.
Visitors to ski resorts might be more impatient for snow, while the ski
instructors will be keeping an eye on the possibility of avalanches. Rangers
are concerned with fog, thunderstorms, and flash floods. Fire patrols look
for weather patterns that are conducive to forest fires (dryness, wind).
Electricity providers are concerned by wind storms that can damage the
infrastructure of the electrical grid and, on larger timescales, also need to
plan how weather will affect upcoming energy needs (minimum
temperatures impact heating, while maximum temperatures impact air-
conditioning). Weather averages, such as prevailing winds, the typical
temperature range, and mean precipitation determine how we build our
homes and what locations are sensitive to extreme events, such as
droughts, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc. On longer timescales, we can
ask how humans are changing the atmosphere, and what those changes
imply for the weather and climate of the future.
To start answering those questions, we need to understand how the
atmosphere works. We need to identify the basic processes that drive the
atmosphere, and the laws that govern atmospheric processes. By doing so,
we will be able to explain the weather phenomena we experience around
the year and throughout the world. Furthermore, we will also be able to
apply these laws to the current state of the atmosphere, and predict how it
will evolve in the future.

22
 © Caroline Planque
There is a lot of value in becoming a knowledgeable observer of the
atmosphere. After reading this book, you will look at the sky differently,
you will gain an understanding of weather and climate that will make you
more attentive to the world around you. You will have a basic
understanding of weather phenomena, of cyclones, thunderstorms, and
hurricanes, and you will understand the basic aspects of weather
forecasting. You will see beyond the weather forecast you get on your
phone, radio, TV, or the internet, and you will be able to make your own
forecast in many situations.

Weather and Climate

23
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
The text on this page is estimated to be only 28.77%
accurate

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 175 of my inquiry concerning

your clergy was not dissimilar. It is no soothing news to my ears,
that great bodies of men are incurably corrupt. It is not with much
credulity I listen to any, when they speak evil of those whom they
are going to plunder. I rather suspect that vices are feigned or
exaggerated, when profit is looked for in their punishment. An
enemy is a bad witness ; a robber is a worse. Vices and abuses
there were undoubtedly in that order, and must be. It was an old
establishment, and not frequently revised. But I saw no crimes in
the individuals that merited confiscation of their substance, nor
those cruel insults and degradations, and that unnatural persecution,
which have been substituted in the place of meliorating regulation. If
there had been any just cause for this new religious persecution, the
atheistic libellers, who act as trumpeters to animate the populace to
plunder, do not love any body so much as not to dwell with
complacence on the vices of the | existing clergy. This they have not
done. They find ! themselves obliged to rake into the histories of
former ages I (which they have ransacked with a malignant and
profligate industry) for every instance of oppression and persecution
which has been made by that body or in its favour, in order to justify,
upon very iniquitous, because very illogical, principles of retaliation,
their own persecutions, and their own cruelties. 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
offences 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
The text on this page is estimated to be only 29.14%
accurate

176 REFLECTIONS ON THE 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 mem
bers, 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 Henrys 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. We do not draw the moral
lessons we might from history. On the contrary, without care it may
be used to vitiate our minds and to destroy our happiness. In history
a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials
of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind. It
may, in the perversion, serve for a magazine, furnishing offensive
and defensive weapons for parties in church and state, and
supplying the means of keeping alive, or reviving, dissensions and
animosities, and adding fuel to civil fury. History consists, for the
greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride,
ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned
zeal,
The text on this page is estimated to be only 28.56%
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REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 177 and all the train of disorderly

appetites which shake the public with the same " troublous storms
that toss The private state, and render life unsweet." These vices are
the causes of those storms. Religion, morals, laws, prerogatives,
privileges, liberties, rights of men, are the pretexts. The pretexts are
always found in some specious appearance of a real good. You
would not j secure men from tyranny and sedition, by rooting out of
the mind the principles to which these fraudulent pretexts apply? If
you did, you would root out everything that is valuable in the human
breast. As these are the pretexts, so the ordinary actors and
instruments in great public evils are kings, priests, magistrates,
senates, parliaments, national I assemblies, judges, and captains.
You would not cure the evil by resolving that there should be no
more monarchs, nor ministers of state, nor of the gospel; no
interpreters of aw; no general officers; no public councils. You might
change the names. The things in some shape must remain. A certain
quantum of power must always exist in the com munity, in some
hands, and under some appellation. Wise men will apply their
remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are
permanent, not to the occasional organs by which they act, and the
transitory modes in which they appear. Otherwise you will be wise
historically, a fqpl n practice. Seldom have two ages the. same
fashion in their pretexts and the same modes of mischief.
Wickedness s a little more inventive. Whilst you are discussing
fashion, the fashion is gone by. The very same vice assumes a new
body. The spirit transmigrates; and, far from losing its Drinciple of
life by the change of its appearance, it is 12
The text on this page is estimated to be only 28.57%
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i78 REFLECTIONS ON THE renovated in its new organs with

afresh vigour of a juvenile activity. It walks abroad, it continues its
ravages, whilst you are gibbeting the carcase, or demolishing the
tomb. You are terrifying yourselves with ghosts and apparitions,
whilst your house is the haunt of robbers. It is thus with all those
who, attending only to the shell and husk of history, think they are
waging war with intolerance, pride, and cruelty, whilst, under colour
of abhorring the ill principles of antiquated parties, they are
authorising and feeding the same odious vices in different factions,
and perhaps in worse. Your citizens of Paris formerly had lent
themselves as the ready instruments to slaughter the followers of
Calvin, at the infamous massacre of St. Bartholomew. What should
we say to those who could think of retaliating on the Parisians of this
day the abominations and horrors of that time? They are indeed
brought to abhor that massacre. Ferocious as they are, it is not
difficult to make them dislike it; because the politicians and
fashionable teachers have no interest in giving their passions exactly
the same direction. Still, however, they find it their interest to keep
the same savage dispositions alive. It was but the other day that
they caused this very massacre to be acted on the stage for the
diversion of the descendants of those who committed it. In this
tragic farce they produced the cardinal of Lorraine in his robes of
function, ordering general slaughter. Was this spectacle intended to
make the Parisians abhor persecution, and loathe the effusion of
blood? — No; it was to teach them to persecute their own pastors; it
was to excite them, by raising a disgust and horror of their clergy, to
an alacrity in hunting down to destruction an order which, if it ought
to exist at all, ought
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REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 179 to exist not only in safety,

but in reverence. It was to stimulate their cannibal appetites (which
one would think had been gorged sufficiently) by variety and
seasoning; and to quicken them to an alertness in new murders and
massacres, if it should suit the purpose of the Guises of the day. An
assembly, in which sat a multitude of priests and prelates, was
obliged to suffer this indignity at its door. The author was not sent to
the galleys, nor the players to the house of correction. Not long after
this exhibition, those players came forward to the Assembly to claim
the rites of that very religion which they had dared to expose, and to
show their prostituted faces in the senate, whilst the archbishop of
Paris, whose function was known to his people only by his prayers
and benedictions, and his wealth only by his alms, is forced to
abandon his house, and to fly from his flock (as from ravenous
wolves), because, truly, in the sixteenth century, the cardinal of
Lorraine was a rebel and a murderer.1 Such is the effect of the
perversion of history by those who, for the same nefarious purposes,
have perverted every other part of learning. But those who will
stand upon that elevation of reason, which places centuries under
our eye, and brings things to the true point of comparison, which
obscures little names, and effaces the colours of little parties, and to
which nothing can ascend but the spirit and moral quality of human
actions, will say to the teachers of the Palais Royal,— The cardinal of
Lorraine was the murderer of the sixteenth century, you have the
glory of being the murderers in the eighteenth; and this is the only
difference between you. But history in the nineteenth 1 This is on a
supposition of the truth of this story, but he was not in France at the
time. One name serves as well as another.
The text on this page is estimated to be only 29.01%
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iSo REFLECTIONS ON THE century, better understood, and

better employed, will, I trust, teach a civilised posterity to abhor the
misdeeds of both these barbarous ages. It will teach future priests
and magistrates not to retaliate upon the speculative and in active
atheists of future times, the enormities committed by the present
practical zealots and furious fanatics of that wretched error, which, in
its quiescent state, is more than punished, whenever it is embraced.
It will teach posterity not to make war upon either religion or
philosophy, for the abuse which the hypocrites of both have made of
the two most valuable blessings conferred upon us by the bounty of
the universal Patron, who in all things eminently favours and
protects the race of man. If your clergy, or any clergy, should show
themselves vicious beyond the fair bounds allowed to human
infirmity, and to those professional faults which can hardly be
separated from professional virtues, though their vices never can
countenance the exercise of oppression, I do admit that they would
naturally have the effect of abating very much of our indignation
against the tyrants who exceed measure and justice in their
punishment. I can allow in clergymen, through all their divisions,
some tenaciousness of their own opinion, some overflowings of zeal
for its propagation, some predilection to their own state and office,
some attachment to the interest of their own corps, some preference
to those who listen with docility to their doctrines, beyond those who
scorn and deride them. I allow all this, because I am a man who
have to deal with men, and who would not, through a violence of
toleration, run into the greatest of all intolerance. I must bear with
infirmities until they fester into crimes. Undoubtedly, the natural
progress of the passions, from
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REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 181 frailty to vice, ought to be

prevented by a watchful eye and a firm hand. But is it true that the
body of your clergy had past those limits of a just allowance? From
the general style of your late publications of all sorts, one would be
led to believe that your clergy in France were a sort of monsters ; a
horrible composition of superstition, ignorance, sloth, fraud, avarice,
and tyranny. But is this true ? Is it true, that the lapse ot time, the
cessation of conflicting interests, the woeful experience of the evils
resulting from party rage, have had no sort of influence gradually to
meliorate their minds? Is it true, that they were daily renewing
invasions on the civil power, troubling the domestic quiet of their
country, and rendering the operations of its govern ment feeble and
precarious ? Is it true, that the clergy of our times have pressed
down the laity with an iron hand, and were, in all places, lighting up
the fires of a savage persecution ? Did they by every fraud
endeavour to increase their estates ? Did they use to exceed the due
demands on estates that were their own ? Or, rigidly screwing up
right into wrong, did they convert a legal claim into a vexatious
extortion ? When not possessed of power, were they filled with the
vices of those who envy it ? Were they inflamed with a violent,
litigious spirit of controversy ? Goaded on with the ambition of
intellectual sovereignty, were they ready to fly in the face of all
magistracy, to fire s, j churches, to massacre the priests of other
descriptions, to 10 jpull down altars, and to make their way over the
ruins of ubverted governments to an empire of doctrine, sometimes
lattering, sometimes forcing, the consciences of men from he
jurisdiction of public institutions into a submission to heir personal
authority, beginning with a claim of liberty, md ending with an abuse
of powrer?
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182 REFLECTIONS ON THE These, or some of these, were

the vices objected, and not wholly without foundation, to several of
the churchmen of former times, who belonged to the two great
parties which then divided and distracted Europe. If there was in
France, as in other countries there visibly is, a great abatement,
rather than any increase of these vices, instead of loading the
present clergy with the crimes of other men, and the odious
character of other times, in common equity they ought to be
praised, encouraged, and supported, in their departure from a spirit
which disgraced their pre decessors, and for having assumed a
temper of mind am manners more suitable to their sacred function.
When my occasions took me into France, towards th close of the late
reign, the clergy, under all their forms engaged a considerable part
of my curiosity. So far frorr finding (except from one set of men, not
then very numerous though very active) the complaints and
discontents agains that body which some publications had given me
reason t( expect, I perceived little or no public or private uneasines
on their account. On further examination, I found th clergy, in
general, persons of moderate minds and decorou manners ; I
include the seculars, and the regulars of botl sexes. I had not the
good fortune to know a great many o the parochial clergy ; but in
general I received a perfect!; good account of their morals, and of
their attention to thei duties. With some of the higher clergy I had a
persona acquaintance ; and of the rest in that class, a very good
means of information. They were, almost all of theiP persons of
noble birth. They resembled others of their owr rank \ and where
there was any difference, it was in thei] favour. They were more fully
educated than the* military noblesse; so as by no means to disgrace
their profession bj
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REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 183 ignorance, or by want of

fitness for the exercise of their authority. They seemed to me,
beyond the clerical character, liberal and open ; with the hearts of
gentlemen, and men of honour; neither insolent nor servile in their
manners and conduct. They seemed to me rather a superior class ; a
set of men amongst whom you would not be surprised to find a
Fenelon. I saw among the clergy in Paris (many of the description
are not to be met with any where) men of great learning and
candour; and I had reason to believe that this description was not
confined to Paris. What I found in other places, I know was
accidental; and therefore to be presumed a fair sample. I spent a
few days in a provincial town, where, in the absence of the bishop, I
passed my evenings with three clergymen, his vicars-general,
persons who would have done honour to any church. They were all
well informed; two of them of deep, general, and extensive
erudition, ancient and modern, oriental and western ; particularly in
their own profession.' They had a more extensive knowledge of our
English divines than I expected ; and they entered into the genius of
those writers with a critical accuracy. One of these gentlemen is
since dead, the Abbe Morangis. I pay this tribute, without
reluctance, to the memory of that noble, reverend, learned, and
excellent person ; and I should do the same, with equal
cheerfulness, to the merits of the others, who I believe are still
living, if I did not fear to hurt those whom I am unable to serve.
Some of these ecclesiastics of rank are, by all titles, per sons
deserving of general respect. They are deserving of gratitude from
me, and from many English. If this letter should ever come into their
hands, I hope they will believe there are those of our nation who
feel for their unmerited
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184 REFLECTIONS ON THE fall, and for the cruel

confiscation of their fortunes, with no common sensibility. What I say
of them is a testimony, as far as one feeble voice can go, which I
owe to truth. When ever the question of this unnatural persecution
is concerned, I will pay it. No one shall prevent me from being just
and grateful. The time is fitted for the duty ; and it is particularly
becoming to show our justice and gratitude, when those who have
deserved well of us and of mankind are labouring under popular
obloquy, and the persecutions of oppressive power. You had before
your Revolution about a hundred and twenty bishops. A few of them
were men of eminent sanctity, and charity without limit. When we
talk of the heroic, of course we talk of rare virtue. I believe the in
stances of eminent depravity may be as rare amongst them as those
of transcendent goodness. Examples of avarice and of licentiousness
may be picked out, I do not question it, by those who delight in the
investigation which leads to such discoveries. A man as old as I am
will not be astonished that several, in every description, do not lead
that perfect life of self-denial, with regard to wealth or to pleasure,
which is wished for by all, by some expected, but by none exacted
with more rigour than by those who are the most attentive to their
own interests, or the most indulgent to their own passions. When I
was in France, I am certain that the number of vicious prelates was
not great. Certain individuals among them, not distinguishable for
the regularity of their lives, made some amends for their want of the
severe virtues, in their possession of the liberal ; and were endowed
with qualities which made them useful in the church and state. I am
told that, with few exceptions, Louis the Sixteenth had been more
attentive to character,
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REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 185 in his promotions to that

rank, than his immediate pre decessor; and I believe (as some spirit
of reform has prevailed through the whole reign) that it may be true.
But the present ruling power has shown a disposition only to plunder
the church. It has punished all prelates; which is to favour the
vicious, at least in point of reputation. It has made a degrading
pensionary establishment, to which no man of liberal ideas or liberal
condition will destine his children. It must settle into the lowest
classes of the people. As with you the inferior clergy are not
numerous enough for their duties ; as these duties are, beyond
measure, minute and toilsome, as you have left no middle classes of
clergy at their ease, in future nothing of science or erudition can
exist in the Gallican church. To complete the project, without the
least attention to the rights of patrons, the Assembly has provided in
future an elective clergy ; an arrangement which will drive out of the
clerical profession all men of sobriety; all who can pretend to
independence in their function or their conduct; and which will throw
the whole direction of the public mind into the hands of a set of
licentious, bold, crafty, factious, flattering wretches, of such
condition and such habits of life as will make their contemptible
pensions (in comparison of which the stipend of an exciseman is
lucrative and honour able) an object of low and illiberal intrigue.
Those officers, whom they still call bishops, are to be elected to a
provision comparatively mean, through the same arts (that is,
electioneering arts), by men of all religious tenets that are known or
can be invented. The new lawgivers have not ascertained anything
whatsoever concerning their qualifica tions, relative either to
doctrine or to morals; no more than they have done with regard to
the subordinate clergy; nor
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186 REFLECTIONS ON THE does it appear but that both the

higher and the lower may, at their discretion, practise or preach any
mode of religion or irreligion that they please. I do not yet see what
the jurisdiction of bishops over their subordinates is to be, or
whether they are to have any jurisdiction at all. In short, Sir, it
seems to me that this new ecclesiastical establishment is intended
only to be temporary, and prepara tory to the utter abolition, under
any of its forms, of the Chris tian religion, whenever the minds of
men are prepared for this last stroke against it, by the
accomplishment of the plan for bringing its ministers into universal
contempt. They who will not believe that the philosophical fanatics
who guide in these matters have long entertained such a design, are
utterly ignorant of their character and proceedings. These
enthusiasts do not scruple to avow their opinion that a state can
subsist without any religion better than with one; and that they are
able to supply the place of any good which may be in it, by a project
of their own — namely, by a sort of education they have imagined,
founded in a knowledge of the physical wants of men ; progressively
carried to an enlightened self-interest, which, when well understood,
they tell us, will identify with an interest more enlarged and public.
The scheme of this education has been long known. Of late they
distinguish it (as they have got an entirely new nomenclature of
technical terms) by the name of a Civic Education, I hope their
partisans in England (to whom I rather attribute very inconsiderate
conduct, than the ultimate object in this detestable design) will
succeed neither in the pillage of the ecclesiastics, nor in the
introduction of a principle of popular election to our bishoprics and
parochial cures. This, in the present condition of the world, would
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REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 187 be the last corruption of the

church; the utter ruin of the clerical character ; the most dangerous
shock that the state ever received through a misunderstood
arrangement of religion. I know well enough that the bishoprics and
cures, under kingly and seignoral patronage, as now they are in
England, and as they have been lately in France, are sometimes
acquired by unworthy methods; but the other mode of ecclesiastical
canvass subjects them infinitely more surely and more generally to
all the evil arts of low ambition, which, operating on and through
greater numbers, will produce mischief in proportion. Those of you
who have robbed the clergy, think that they shall easily reconcile
their conduct to all Protestant nations ; because the clergy, whom
they have thus plundered, degraded, and given over to mockery and
scorn, are of the Roman Catholic, that is, of their own pretended
persuasion. I have no doubt that some miserable bigots will be
found here, as well as elsewhere, who hate sects and parties differ
ent from their own, more than they love the substance of religion ;
and who are more angry with those who differ from them in their
particular plans and systems, than displeased with those who attack
the foundation of our common hope. These men will write and speak
on the subject in the manner that is to be expected from their
temper and character. Burnet says, that when he was in France, in
the year 1683, "the method which carried over the men of the finest
parts to Popery was this— they brought themselves to doubt of the
whole Christian religion. When that was once done, it seemed a
more indifferent thing of what side or form they continued
outwardly/' If this was then the ecclesiastical policy of France, it is
what they have since but too much reason to repent of. They pre 
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1 88 REFLECTIONS ON THE ferred atheism to a form of

religion not agreeable to their ideas. They succeeded in destroying
that form ; and atheism has succeeded in destroying them. I can
readily give credit to Burnet's story; because I have observed too
much of a similar spirit (for a little of it is "much too much") amongst
ourselves. The humour, however, is not general. The teachers who
reformed our religion in England bore no sort of resemblance to your
present reforming doctors in Paris. Perhaps they were (like those
whom they opposed) rather more than could be wished under the
influence of a party spirit ; but they were more sincere believers ;
men of the most fervent and exalted piety; ready to die (as some of
them did die) like true heroes in defence of their particular ideas of
Christianity; as they would with equal fortitude, and more cheerfully,
for that stock of general truth, for the branches of which they
contended with their blood. These men would have disavowed with
horror those wretches who claimed a fellowship with them upon no
other titles than those of their having pillaged the persons with
whom they maintained controversies, and their having despised the
common religion, for the purity of which they exerted them selves
with a zeal which unequivocally bespoke their highest reverence for
the substance of that system which they wished to reform. Many of
their descendants have retained the same zeal, but (as less engaged
in conflict) with more moderation. They do not forget that justice
and mercy are substantial parts of religion. Impious men do not
recom mend themselves to their communion by iniquity and cruelty
towards any description of their fellow-creatures. We hear these new
teachers continually boasting of their spirit of toleration. That those
persons should tolerate all
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REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 189 opinions, who think none to

be of estimation, is a matter of small merit. Equal neglect is not
impartial kindness. The species of benevolence, which arises from
contempt, is no true charity. There are in England abundance of men
who tolerate in the true spirit of toleration. They think the dogmas of
religion, though in different degrees, are all of moment; and that
amongst them there is, as amongst all things of value, a just ground
of preference. They favour, therefore, and they tolerate. They
tolerate, not because they despise opinions, but because they
respect justice. They would reverently and affectionately protect all
religions, because they love and venerate the great principle upon
which they all agree, and the great object to which they are all
directed. They begin more and more plainly to discern that we have
all a common cause, as against a common enemy. They will not be
so misled by the spirit of faction as not to distinguish what is done in
favour of their sub division, from those acts of hostility which,
through some particular description, are aimed at the whole corps,
in which they themselves, under another denomination, are
included. It is impossible for me to say what may be the character of
every description of men amongst us. But I speak for the greater
part; and for them, I must tell you, that sacrilege is no part of their
doctrine of good works ; that, so far from calling you into their
fellowship on such title, if your professors are admitted to their
communion, they must carefully conceal their doctrine of the
lawfulness of the proscription of innocent men ; and that they must
make restitution of all stolen goods whatsoever. Till then they are
none of ours. You may suppose that we do not approve your
confisca tion of the revenues of bishops, and deans, and chapters,
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T9o REFLECTIONS ON THE and parochial clergy possessing

independent estates arising from land, because we have the same
sort of establishment in England. That objection, you will say, cannot
hold as to the confiscation of the goods of monks and nuns, and the
abolition of their order. It is true that this particular part of your
general confiscation does not affect England, as a precedent in point
; but the reason implies, and it goes a great way. The long
parliament confiscated the lands of deans and chapters in England
on the same ideas upon which your assembly set to sale the lands of
the monastic orders. But it is in the principle of injustice that the
danger lies, and not in the description of persons on whom it is first
exercised. I see, in a country very near us, a course of policy
pursued which sets justice, the common concern of mankind, at
defiance. With the National Assembly of France, possession is
nothing, law and usage are nothing. I see the National Assembly
openly repro bate the doctrine of prescription, which one of the
greatest of their own lawyers1 tells us, with great truth, is a part of
the law of nature. He tells us, that the positive ascertain ment of its
limits, and its security from invasion, were among the causes for
which civil society itself has been instituted. If prescription be once
shaken, no species of property is secure, when it once becomes an
object large enough to tempt the cupidity of indigent power. I see a
practice perfectly correspondent to their contempt of this great
fundamental part of natural law. I see the confiscators begin with
bishops, and chapters, and monasteries; but I do not see them end
there. I see the princes of the blood, who, by the oldest usages of
that kingdom, held large landed estates (hardly with the compliment
of a debate), deprived 1 Domat.
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REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. I9I of their possessions, and, in

lieu of their stable, independent property, reduced to the hope of
some precarious, charitable pension, at the pleasure of an assembly
which of course will pay little regard to the rights of pensioners at
pleasure, when it despises those of legal proprietors. Flushed with
the insolence of their first inglorious victories, and pressed by the
distresses caused by their lust of unhallowed lucre, disappointed but
not discouraged, they have at length ventured completely to subvert
all property of all descrip tions throughout the extent of a great
kingdom. They have compelled all men, in all transactions of
commerce, in the disposal of lands, in civil dealing, and through the
whole communion of life, to accept as perfect payment and good
and lawful tender, the symbols of their speculations on a projected
sale of their plunder. What vestiges of liberty or property have they
left? The tenant-right of a cabbagegarden, a year's interest in a
hovel, the good-will of an ale house or a baker's shop, the very
shadow of a constructive property, are more ceremoniously treated
in our parliament, than with you the oldest and most valuable landed
posses sions, in the hands of the most respectable personages, or
than the whole body of the moneyed and commercial interest of
your country. We entertain a high opinion of the legis lative
authority; but we have never dreamt that parlia ments had any right
whatever to violate property, to overrule prescription, or to force a
currency of their own fiction in the place of that which is real, and
recognised by the law of nations. But you, who began with refusing
to submit to the most moderate restraints, have ended by
establishing an unheard-of despotism. I find the ground upon which
your confiscators go is this : that indeed their proceedings could not
be supported in a court of justice •
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iQ2 REFLECTIONS ON THE but that the rules of prescription

cannot bind a legislative assembly.1 So that this legislative assembly
of a free nation sits, not for the security, but for the destruction, of
property, and not of property only, but of every rule and maxim
which can give it stability, and of those instruments which can alone
give it circulation. When the Anabaptists of Miinster, in the sixteenth
century, had filled Germany with confusion, by their system of
levelling, and their wild opinions concerning property, to what
country in Europe did not the progress of their fury furnish just
cause of alarm ? Of all things, wisdom is the most terrified with
epidemical fanaticism, because of all enemies it is that against which
she is the least able to furnish any kind of resource. We cannot be
ignorant of the spirit of atheistical fanaticism, that is inspired by a
multitude of writings, dispersed with incredible assiduity and
expense, and by sermons delivered in all the streets and places of
public resort in Paris. These writings and sermons have filled the
populace with a black and savage atrocity of mind, which supersedes
in them the common feelings of nature, as well as all sentiments of
morality and religion ; insomuch that these wretches are induced to
bear with a sullen patience the intolerable distresses brought upon
them by the violent convulsions and permutations that have been
made in property.2 The spirit of proselytism attends this 1 Speech of
Mr. Camus, published by order of the National Assembly. 2 Whether
the following description is strictly true, I know not ; but it is what
the publishers would have pass for true in order to animate others.
In a letter front Toul, given in one of their papers, is the following
passage concerning the people of that district: "Dans la Revolution
actuelle, ils ont resiste a toutes les seductions du bigotisme, aux
persecutions, et aux tracasseries des ennemis de la Revolution.
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REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 193 spirit of fanaticism. They

have societies to cabal and correspond at home and abroad for the
propagation of their tenets. The republic of Berne, one of the
happiest, the most prosperous, and the best governed countries
upon earth, is one of the great objects at the destruction of which
they aim. I am told they have in some measure succeeded in sowing
there the seeds of discontent. They are busy throughout Germany.
Spain and Italy have not been untried. England is not left out of the
comprehensive scheme of their malignant charity : and in England
we fir^d" those who stretch out their arms to them,--v¥he--
recrjrrfm1md their example from more than one pulpit, and who
choose in more than one periodical meeting publicly to correspond
with them, to applaud them, and to hold them up as objects for
imitation ; who receive from them tokens of confra ternity, and
standards consecrated amidst their rights and mysteries ; l who
suggest to them leagues of perpetual amity, Oubliant leurs phis
grdnds interels pour rendre hommage aux vues d'ordre general qui
ont determine I'Assemblee Nationale, ils voient, sans se plaindre,
supprimer cette foule d'etablissemens ecclesiastiques par lesquels ils
subsistoient ; et meme, en perdant leur siege episcopal, la seul de
toutes ses ressources qui pouvoit, ou plutot qui devoif, en toute
tquite, leur etre conservee ; condamnes & la phis effrayante misere,
sans avoir tie ni pu etre en.'endus, ils ne murmiirent point, ils restent
fideles aux principes du plus pur patriotisine ; ils sont encore prets a
verser leur sang pour le maintien de la Constitution, qui va reduire
leur ville a la plus deplorable millite." These people are not supposed
to have endured those sufferings and injustices in a struggle for
liberty, for the same account states truly that they had been always
free ; their patience in beggary and ruin, and their suffering, without
remonstrance, the most flagrant and confessed injustice, if strictly
true, can be nothing but the effect of this dire fanaticism. A great
multitude all over France is in the same condition and the same
temper. 1 See the proceedings of the confederation at Nantz.
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194 REFLECTIONS ON THE at the very time when the

power to which our constitution has exclusively delegated the
federative capacity of this kingdom, may find it expedient to make
war upon them. It is not the confiscation of our church property
from this example in France that I dread, though I think this would
be no trifling evil. The great source of my solicitude is, lest it should
ever be considered in England as the policy of a state to seek a
resource in confiscations of any kind; or that any one description of
citizens should be brought to regard any of the others as their
proper prey.1 Nations are wading deeper and deeper into an ocean
of boundless debt. Public debts, which at first were a security to
governments, by interesting many in the public tranquillity, are likely
in their excess to become the means of their subversion. If
governments provide for these debts by heavy impositions, they
perish by becoming odious to the people. If they do 1 "Si plures sunt
ii quibus improbe datum est, quam illi quibis injuste ademptum est,
idcirco plus etiam valent ? Non enim numero hsec juclicantur sed
pondere. Quam atitcm habet cequitatem, ut agrum multis annis, aut
etiam sceculis ante possessum, qui nullum habuit habeat ; qui aulem
habuit amittat ? Ac, propter hoc injuring genus, Lacedoemonii
Lysandrum Ephorum expulerunt : Agin regem (quod nunquam antea
apud eos acciderat) necaverunt : exque eo tempore tante discordiaj
secutre sunt, ut et tyranni existerint, et optimates exterminarentur,
et preclarissime constituta respublica dilaberetur. Nee vero solum
ipsa cecidit, sed etiam reliquam Grseciam evertit contagionibus
malorum, quoe a Lacedsemoniis profectce manarunt latins." — After
speak ing 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 proeconis. At ille Griecus (id quod fuit
sapient is et prsestantis viri omnibus consulendum esse putavit :
eaque est summa ratio et sapientia boni civis, commoda civium non
divellere, sed omnes eadem sequitate continere." — Cic. G/l, 1. 2.
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REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 195 not provide for them they

will be undone by the efforts of the most dangerous of all parties ; I
mean an extensive, discontented moneyed interest, injured and not
destroyed. The men who compose this interest look for their
security, in the first instance, to the fidelity of government; in the
second, to its power. If they find the old governments effete, worn
out, and with their springs relaxed, so as not to be of sufficient
vigour for their purposes, they may seek new ones that shall be
possessed of more energy; and this energy will be derived, not from
an acquisition of resources, but from a contempt of justice.
Revolutions are favourable to confiscation ; and it is impossible to
know under what obnoxious names the next confiscations will be
authorised. I am sure that the principles predominant in France
extend to very many persons, and descriptions of persons, in all
countries who think their innoxious indolence their security. This kind
of innocence in proprietors may be argued into inutility; and inutility
into an unfitness for their estates. Many parts of Europe are in open
disorder. In many others there is a hollow murmuring under ground ;
a con fused movement is felt, that threatens a general earthquake in
the political world. Already confederacies and correspon dencies of
the most extraordinary nature are forming, in several countries.1 In
such a state of things we ought to hold ourselves upon our guard. In
all mutations (if muta tions must be) the circumstance which will
serve most to blunt the edge of their mischief, and to promote what
good may be in them, is, that they should find us with our minds
tenacious of justice, and tender of property. But it will be argued
that this confiscation in France 1 See two books entitled, Einige
Originahchriften des Illuminatcnordens— System und Folgen des
Illuminatenordens. Miinchen, 1787.
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196 REFLECTIONS ON THE 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, supersti tious 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 stigmatise with shame and infamy that
character, and those customs, which before had been made the
measure of their happiness and honour. If to this be added an
expulsion from their habitations, and a confiscation of all their
goods, I am not sagacious enough to discover how this despotic
sport, made of the feelings, consciences, prejudices, and properties
of men, can be discriminated from the rankest tyranny. If the
injustice of the course pursued in France be clear, the policy of the
measure, that is, the public benefit to be expected from it, ought to
be at least as evident, and at least as important. To a man who acts
under the influence of no passion, who has nothing in view in his
projects but the public good, a great difference will immediately
strike him between what policy would dictate on the original
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REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 197 introduction of such

institutions, and on a question of their total abolition, where they
have cast their roots wide and deep, and where, by long habit,
things more valuable than themselves are so adapted to them, and
in a manner inter woven with them, that the one cannot be
destroyed without notably impairing the other. He might be
embarrassed if the case were really such as sophisters represent it in
their paltry style of debating. But in this, as in most questions of
state, there is a middle. There is something else than the mere
alternative of absolute destruction, or unreformed existence.
Spartam nactus es ; hanc exorna. This is, in my opinion, a rule of
profound sense, and ought never to depart from the mind of an
honest reformer. I cannot conceive how any man can have brought
himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as
nothing but carle blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he
pleases. A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his
society otherwise constituted than he finds it; but a good patriot,
and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most
of the existing materials of his country. A disposition to preserve,
and an ability to im prove, taken together, would be my standard of
a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in
the execution. There are moments in the fortune of states, when
parti cular men are called to make improvements, by great mental
exertion. In those moments, even when they seem to enjoy the
confidence of their prince and country, and to be invested with full
authority, they have not always apt instru ments. A politician, to do
great things, looks for a power, what our workmen call a purchase ;
and if he finds that power, in politics as in mechanics, he cannot be
at a loss to
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198 REFLECTIONS ON THE apply it. In the monastic

institutions, in my opinion, was found a great power for the
mechanism of politic benevo lence. There were revenues with a
public direction ; there were men wholly set apart and dedicated to
public purposes, without any other than public ties and public
principles ; men without the possibility of converting the estate of
the community into a private fortune; men denied to selfinterests,
whose avarice is for some community; men to whom personal
poverty is honour, and implicit obedience stands in the place of
freedom. In vain shall a man look to the possibility of making such
things when he wants them. The winds blow as they list. These
institutions are the products of enthusiasm; they are the instruments
of wisdom. Wisdom cannot create materials; they are the gifts of
nature or of chance ; her pride is in the use. The perennial ex
istence of bodies corporate and their fortunes are things particularly
suited to a man who has long views; who meditates designs that
require time in fashioning, and which propose duration when they
are accomplished. He is not deserving to rank high, or even to be
mentioned in the order of great statesmen, who, having obtained
the command and direction of such a power as existed in the
wealth, the discipline, and the habits of such corporations, as those
which you have rashly destroyed, cannot find any way of converting
it to the great and lasting benefit of his country. On the view of this
subject, a thousand uses suggest them selves to a contriving mind.
To destroy any power, growing wild from the rank productive force of
the human mind, is almost tantamount, in the moral world, to the
destruction of the apparently active properties of bodies in the
material. It would be like the attempt to destroy (if it were in our
competence to destroy) the expansive force of fixed air in
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REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 199 nitre, or the power of steam,

or of electricity, or of magnet ism. These energies always existed in
nature, and they were always discernible. They seemed, some of
them unserviceable, some noxious, some no better than a sport to
children ; until contemplative ability, combining with practic skill,
tamed their wild nature, subdued them to use, and rendered them
at once the most powerful and the most tractable agents, in
subservience to the great views and designs of men. Did fifty
thousand persons, whose mental and whose bodily labour you might
direct, and so many hundred thousand a year of a revenue, which
was neither lazy nor superstitious, appear too big for your abilities to
wield? Had you no way of using the men but by convert ing monks
into pensioners? Had you no way of turning the revenue to account,
but through the improvident resource of a spendthrift sale? If you
were thus destitute of mental funds, the proceeding is in its natural
course. | Your politicians do not understand their trade ; and there
fore they sell their tools. But the institutions savour of superstition in
their very I principle; and they nourish it by a permanent and
standing influence. This I do not mean to dispute; but this ought ':
not to hinder you from deriving from superstition itself any resources
which may thence be furnished for the public j advantage. You
derive benefits from many dispositions I and many passions of the
human mind, which are of as doubtful a colour, in the moral eye, as
superstition itself. It '• was your business to correct and mitigate
everything which was noxious in this passion, as in all the passions.
But is superstition the greatest of all possible vices ? In its possible
excess I think it becomes a very great evil. It is, however, a moral
subject; and of course admits of all
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200 REFLECTIONS ON THE degrees and all modifications.

Superstition is the religion of feeble minds; and they must be
tolerated in an inter mixture of it, in some trifling or some
enthusiastic shape or other, else you will deprive weak minds of a
resource found necessary to the strongest. The body of all true
religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will of the Sovereign
of the world; in a confidence in his declarations; and in imitation of
his perfections. The rest is our own. It may be prejudicial to the
great end; it may be auxiliary. Wise men, who as such are not
admirers (not admirers at least of the Munera Terra), are not
violently attached to these things, nor do they violently hate them.
Wisdom is not the most severe corrector of folly. They are the rival
follies, which mutually wage so unrelenting a war; and which make
so cruel a use of their advantages, as they can happen to engage
the immoderate vulgar, on the one side or the other, in their
quarrels. Prudence would be neuter; but if, in the contention
between fond attachment and fierce antipathy concerning things in
their nature not made to produce such heats, a prudent man were
obliged to make a choice of what errors and excesses of enthusiasm
he would condemn or bear, perhaps he would think the superstition
which builds, to be more tolerable than that which demolishes —
that which adorns a country, than that which deforms it — that
which endows, than that which plunders — • that which disposes to
mistaken beneficence, than that which stimulates to real injustice —
that which leads a man to refuse to himself lawful pleasures, than
that which snatches from others the scanty subsistence of their self-
denial. Such, I think, is very nearly the state of the question
between the ancient founders of monkish superstition, and the
supersti tion of the pretended philosophers of the hour.
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REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 201 For the present I postpone

all consideration of the supposed public profit of the sale, which,
however, I con ceive to be perfectly delusive. I shall here only
consider it as a transfer of property. On the policy of that transfer I
shall trouble you with a few thoughts. In every prosperous
community something more is produced than goes to the immediate
support of the producer. This surplus forms the income of the landed
capitalist. It will be spent by a proprietor who does not labour. But
this idleness is itself the spring of labour; this repose the spur to
industry. The only concern of the state is, that the capital taken in
rent from the land should be returned again to the industry from
whence it came; and that its expenditure should be with the least
possible detriment to the morals of those who expend it, and to
those of the people to whom it is returned. In all the views of
receipt, expenditure, and personal employment, a sober legislator
would carefully compare the possessor whom he was recommended
to expel, with the stranger who was proposed to fill his place. Before
the inconveniences are incurred which must attend all violent
revolutions in property through extensive confiscation, we ought to
have some rational assurance that the purchasers of the confiscated
property will be in a considerable degree more laborious, more
virtuous, more sober, less disposed to extort an unreasonable
proportion of the gains of the labourer, or to consume on themselves
a larger share than is fit for the measure of an individual; or that
they should be qualified to dispense the surplus in a more steady
and equal mode, so as to answer the purposes of a politic
expenditure, than the old possessors, call those possessors bishops,
or canons, or commendatory abbots, or monks, or
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202 REFLECTIONS ON THE what you please. "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, un seemly, 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 labour 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. When the advantages of the possession
and of the pro ject are on a par, there is no motive for a change. But
m the present case, perhaps, they are not upon a par, and the
difference is in favour of the possession. It does not appear to me
that the expenses of those whom you are going to expel, do in fact
take a course so directly and so
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REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 203 generally leading to vitiate

and degrade and render miser able those through whom they pass,
as the expenses of those favourites whom you are intruding into
their houses. Why should the expenditure of a great landed property,
which is a dispersion of the surplus product of the soil, appear
intolerable to you or to me, when it takes its course through the
accumulation of vast libraries, which are the history of the force and
weakness of the human mind; through great collections of ancient
records, medals, and coins, which attest and explain laws and
customs; through paintings and statues, that, by imitating nature,
seem to extend the limits of creation; through grand monuments of
the dead, which continue the regards and connections of life beyond
the grave ; through collections of the specimens of nature, which
become a representative assembly of all the classes and families of
the world, that by disposition facilitate, and, by exciting curiosity,
open the avenues to science? If by great permanent establishments,
all these objects of expense are better secured from the inconstant
sport of personal caprice and personal extravagance, are they worse
than if the same tastes prevailed in scattered individuals? Does not
the sweat of the mason and carpenter, who toil in order to partake
the sweat of the peasant, flow as pleasantly and as salubriously, in
the con struction and repair of the majestic edifices of religion, as in
the painted booths and sordid sties of vice and luxury; as
honourably and as profitably in repairing those sacred works, which
grow hoary with innumerable years, as on the momentary
receptacles of transient voluptuousness; in opera-houses, and
brothels, and gaming-houses, and club houses, and obelisks in the
Champ de Mars? Is the surplus product of the olive and the vine
worse employed
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204 REFLECTIONS ON THE in the frugal sustenance of

persons, whom the fictions of a pious imagination raise to dignity by
construing in the service of God, than in pampering the innumerable
multi tude of those who are degraded by being made useless
domestics, subservient to the pride of man? Are the decorations of
temples an expenditure less worthy a wise man than ribbons, and
laces, and national cockades, and petit maisons, and petit soupers,
and all the innumerable fopperies and follies in which opulence
sports away the burthen of its superfluity ? We tolerate even these ;
not from love of them, but for fear of worse. We tolerate them,
because property and liberty, to a degree, require that toleration.
But why proscribe the other, and surely, in every point of view, the
more laudable use of estates ? Why, through the violation of all
property, through an outrage upon every principle of liberty, forcibly
carry them from the better to the worse ? This comparison between
the new individuals and the old corps is made upon a supposition
that no reform could be made in the latter. But, in a question of
reformation, I always consider corporate bodies, whether sole or
consisting of many, to be much more susceptible of a public
direction by the power of the state, in the use of their property, and
in the regulation of modes and habits of life in their members, than
private citizens ever can be, or perhaps ( ought to be : and this
seems to me a very material con sideration for those who undertake
anything which merits ' the name of a politic enterprise. — So far as
to the estates of : monasteries. With regard to the estates
possessed by bishops and canons, and commendatory abbots, I
cannot find out for
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