ian, as moralist, questioning its
sources, opposing evidences, driving ridicule like a pick-ax into every
weak spot where an outraged instinct beats against its mystic walls,
and into all doubtful places where ulterior patchwork disfigures the
primitive structure.--He respects, however, the first foundation, and,
in this particular, the greatest writers of the day follow the same
course. Under positive religions that are false there is a natural
religion that is true. This is the simple and authentic text of which
the others are altered and amplified translations. Remove the ulterior
and divergent excesses and the original remains; this common essence, on
which all copies harmonize, is deism.--The same operation is to be
made on civil and political law. In France, where so many survive their
utility, where privileges are no longer paid for with service, where
rights are changed into abuses, how incoherent is the architecture of
the old Gothic building! How poorly adapted to a modern nation! Of
what use, in an unique and compact state, are those feudal compartments
separating orders, corporations and provinces? What a living paradox
is the archbishop of a semi-province, a chapter owning 12,000 serfs,
a drawing room abbe well supported by a monastery he never saw, a lord
liberally pensioned to figure in antechambers, a magistrate purchasing
the right to administer justice, a colonel leaving college to take the
command of his inherited regiment, a Parisian trader who, renting a
house for one year in Franche-Comte, alienates through this act alone
the ownership of his property and of his person. Throughout Europe
there are others of the same character. The best that can be said of
"a civilized nation" [3312] is that its laws, customs and practices are
composed "one-half of abuses and one-half of tolerable usage".--But,
underneath these concrete laws, which contradict each other, and of
which each contradicts itself, a natural law exists, implied in the
codes, applied socially, and written in all hearts.

"Show me a country where it is honest to steal the fruits of my labor,
to violate engagements, to lie for injurious purposes, to calumniate, to
assassinate, to poison, to be ungrateful to one's benefactor, to strike
one's father and mother on offering you food".--"Justice and injustice
is the same throughout the universe," and, as in the worst community
force always, in some respects, is at the service of right, so, in the