ity.'[7]

De Maistre's deity is thus a colossal Septembriseur, enthroned high in
the peaceful heavens, demanding ever-renewed holocausts in the name of
the public safety.

It is true, as a general rule of the human mind, that the objects which
men have worshipped have improved in morality and wisdom as men
themselves have improved. The quiet gods, without effort of their own,
have grown holier and purer by the agitations and toil which civilise
their worshippers. In other words, the same influences which elevate and
widen our sense of human duty give corresponding height and nobleness to
our ideas of the divine character. The history of the civilisation of
the earth is the history of the civilisation of Olympus also. It will be
seen that the deity whom De Maistre sets up is below the moral level of
the time in respect of Punishment. In intellectual matters he vehemently
proclaimed the superiority of the tenth or the twelfth over the
eighteenth century, but it is surely carrying admiration for those loyal
times indecently far, to seek in the vindictive sackings of revolted
towns, and the miscellaneous butcheries of men, women, and babes, which
then marked the vengeance of outraged sovereignty, the most apt parallel
and analogy for the systematic administration of human society by its
Creator. Such punishment can no longer be regarded as moral in any deep
or permanent sense; it implies a gross, harsh, and revengeful character
in the executioner, that is eminently perplexing and incredible to those
who expect to find an idea of justice in the government of the world, at
least not materially below what is attained in the clumsy efforts of
uninspired publicists.

In mere point of administration, the criminal code which De Maistre put
into the hands of the Supreme Being works in a more arbitrary and
capricious manner than any device of an Italian Bourbon. As Voltaire
asks--

_Lisbonne, qui n'est plus, eut-elle plus de vices
Que Londres, que Paris, plonges dans les delices?
Lisbonne est abimee, et l'on danse a Paris._

Stay, De Maistre replies, look at Paris thirty years later, not dancing,
but red with blood. This kind of thing is often said, even now; but it
is really time to abandon the prostitution of the name of Justice to a
process which brings Lewis XVI. to the block, and consigns De Maistre to
poverty and exile, because Lewis XIV., the Regent, and Lewis XV. had
been profligate men or injudicious rul