e {244} catholic princes to discard them, and, in so doing, to open
volcanoes beneath their thrones.

The destruction of the Jesuits was, literally, the destruction of that
education, in catholic countries, by which order was established on its
best and surest foundation, the belief of future rewards and punishments,
and the conviction, that man was on earth but a transient being, whose
chief object was to work out his salvation and eternal happiness in another
world; a conviction, that could only be impressed upon the mind by the
truths of revelation. It is no part of my object here to enter into a
dissertation upon the comparative excellencies and defects of religious
systems; but I maintain, that the distinguishing faculty of comprehending
religious subjects, and the disposition to be influenced by them,
interwoven in the nature of man, are proofs, that it is intended by God
that he should be principally and generally influenced by religious
motives; and that morality, with all its beauty, to be valuable, must
originate in {245} that source. Let even temperate philosophers say what
they will of morality, independent of religion, there is one striking
advantage to states arising from the latter, which the former cannot yield.
Contentment and resignation are the fruits of religion; insulated morality
generates discontent, and has a perpetual tendency to doubt the justice of
the inequality of conditions in this life; very naturally too, if the short
race of it be all to which our hopes and fears can extend. There is also a
gradation in morality; there is a confined and a _refined_ morality. _Suum
cuique tribuitur_ is a maxim of confined morality; the _refined_ moralist
is a cosmopolite; and, still more refined, he denies the rights of _meum_
and _tuum_; and the government that suffers one man to enjoy more than
another is an unjust government, consequently man ought to seek a just one,
and so we have the revolutionary system. It is only religion, it is only
the Christian religion, which can reconcile morality to the state of man.
This is the beautiful morality which binds him in social order, {246} which
gives to Caesar what is due to Caesar, and, in securing to every man the
rights he has obtained of property, calls upon him to rectify the
selfishness of corrupted nature; to do as he would be done by, to love his
brother as himself, and still farther to assimilate himself to his Master
and to his God, by loving his enemi