ment and clergy
can, for any length of time, act in opposition to each other: one or
other of the two must soon fall, and there have been instances of the
triumph of each. We have sometimes seen kings triumph over the
clergy, but not very often; and we have frequently seen governments
overturned by their means: except, therefore, in a state of revolution,
they must mutually support each other. This is the natural state of
things; but, in Roman Catholic countries, priests have a superior sway
to what they have in any other, for several reasons that are very
obvious. In the first place, the sovereign of the nation is not the head
of the church; and, in the second, by means of a very superior degree
of art and attention, during the dark ages, when the laity were sunk in
ignorance, the catholic clergy contrived to entail the church property,
from generation to generation, upon the whole body: at the same time,
enjoining celibacy, by which all chance of alienation, even of personal
property, was done away. As to the means of acquiring property, and
of augmenting it; they were many, and, in every contest with the
secular authority, they had a great advantage, by speaking, as it were,
through ten thousand mouths at once, and giving the alarm to the
consciences of the weak. In countries where the protestant religion has
been established, the case is widely different. Gothic darkness was
nearly fled before the reformation: besides this, the clergy are like
other men, with regard to the manner of living; they are fathers and
husbands, and, as such, liable to have all the property that is their own
alienated, as much as any other set of men [end of page #117]
whatever. The reformers, who were neither destitute of penetration nor
zeal, and who knew all the abuses of the church of Rome, in matters
of regulation as well as of opinion, were very careful to settle the new
order of things on such a plan, as to be free from the evils which they
had experienced, and against which they had risen with such energy
and zeal.
-=-

The simple state of the case is, that the interest of the people is that of
the sovereign; and, except in cases where there is a profound
ignorance of what is good for the nation, every wise sovereign takes
the part of the people. But, under a limited monarchy, or in a
democracy, the case is different. There, those bodies, which an
arbitrary monarch would reduce to obedience at once, stand upon
prerogative themselv