nces of their natural ancestors; but to
take the fiction of ancestry in a corporate succession, as a ground for
punishing men who have no relation to guilty acts, except in names and
general descriptions, is a sort of refinement in injustice belonging to
the philosophy of this enlightened age. The Assembly punishes men, many,
if not most, of whom abhor the violent conduct of ecclesiastics in
former times as much as their present persecutors can do, and who would
be as loud and as strong in the expression of that sense, if they were
not well aware of the purposes for which all this declamation is
employed.

Corporate bodies are immortal for the good of the members, but not for
their punishment. Nations themselves are such corporations. As well
might we in England think of waging inexpiable war upon all Frenchmen
for the evils which they have brought upon us in the several periods of
our mutual hostilities. You might, on your part, think yourselves
justified in falling upon all Englishmen on account of the unparalleled
calamities brought upon the people of France by the unjust invasions of
our Henrys and our Edwards. Indeed, we should be mutually justified in
this exterminatory war upon each other, full as much as you are in the
unprovoked persecution of your present countrymen, on account of the
conduct of men of the same name in other times.

We do not draw the moral lessons we might from history. On the contrary,
without care it may be used to vitiate our minds and to destroy our
happiness. In history a great volume is unrolled for our instruction,
drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and
infirmities of mankind. It may, in the perversion, serve for a magazine,
furnishing offensive and defensive weapons for parties in Church and
State, and supplying the means of keeping alive or reviving dissensions
and animosities, and adding fuel to civil fury. History consists, for
the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride,
ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal,
and all the train of disorderly appetites, which shake the public with
the same

"troublous storms that toss
The private state, and render life unsweet."

These vices are the _causes_ of those storms. Religion, morals, laws,
prerogatives, privileges, liberties, rights of men, are the _pretexts_.
The pretexts are always found in some specious appearance of a real
good. You woul