prove his
title, all he required of him was to administer, in a manner agreeable
to his pure sentiments and unspotted character, that justice without
which human society cannot subsist,--that it was not his particular
government, but civil order itself, which, as a judge, he wished him to
support. Cromwell knew how to separate the institutions expedient to his
usurpation from the administration of the public justice of his country.
For Cromwell was a man in whom ambition had not wholly suppressed, but
only suspended, the sentiments of religion, and the love (as far as it
could consist with his designs) of fair and honorable reputation.
Accordingly, we are indebted to this act of his for the preservation of
our laws, which some senseless assertors of the rights of men were then
on the point of entirely erasing, as relics of feudality and barbarism.
Besides, he gave, in the appointment of that man, to that age, and to
all posterity, the most brilliant example of sincere and fervent piety,
exact justice, and profound jurisprudence.[2] But these are not the
things in which your philosophic usurpers choose to follow Cromwell.

One would think, that, after an honest and necessary revolution, (if
they had a mind that theirs should pass for such,) your masters would
have imitated the virtuous policy of those who have been at the head of
revolutions of that glorious character. Burnet tells us, that nothing
tended to reconcile the English nation to the government of King William
so much as the care he took to fill the vacant bishoprics with men who
had attracted the public esteem by their learning, eloquence, and piety,
and above all, by their known moderation in the state. With you, in your
purifying revolution, whom have you chosen to regulate the Church? M.
Mirabeau is a fine speaker, and a fine writer, and a fine--a very fine
man; but, really, nothing gave more surprise to everybody here than to
find him the supreme head of your ecclesiastical affairs. The rest is of
course. Your Assembly addresses a manifesto to France, in which they
tell the people, with an insulting irony, that they have brought the
Church to its primitive condition. In one respect their declaration is
undoubtedly true: for they have brought it to a state of poverty and
persecution. What can be hoped for after this? Have not men, (if they
deserve the name,) under this new hope and head of the Church, been made
bishops for no other merit than having acted as