y, and rendering the operations of its government
feeble and precarious? Is it true that the clergy of our times have
pressed down the laity with an iron hand, and were in all places
lighting up the fires of a savage persecution? Did they by every fraud
endeavor to increase their estates? Did they use to exceed the due
demands on estates that were their own? Or, rigidly screwing up right
into wrong, did they convert a legal claim into a vexatious extortion?
When not possessed of power, were they filled with the vices of those
who envy it? Were they inflamed with a violent, litigious spirit of
controversy? Goaded on with the ambition of intellectual sovereignty,
were they ready to fly in the face of all magistracy, to fire churches,
to massacre the priests of other descriptions, to pull down altars, and
to make their way over the ruins of subverted governments to an empire
of doctrine, sometimes flattering, sometimes forcing, the consciences of
men from the jurisdiction of public institutions into a submission to
their personal authority, beginning with a claim of liberty and ending
with an abuse of power?

These, or some of these, were the vices objected, and not wholly
without foundation, to several of the churchmen of former times, who
belonged to the two great parties which then divided and distracted
Europe.

If there was in France, as in other countries there visibly is, a great
abatement, rather than any increase of these vices, instead of loading
the present clergy with the crimes of other men and the odious character
of other times, in common equity they ought to be praised, encouraged,
and supported, in their departure from a spirit which disgraced their
predecessors, and for having assumed a temper of mind and manners more
suitable to their sacred function.

When my occasions took me into France, towards the close of the late
reign, the clergy, under all their forms, engaged a considerable part of
my curiosity. So far from finding (except from one set of men, not then
very numerous, though very active) the complaints and discontents
against that body which some publications had given me reason to expect,
I perceived little or no public or private uneasiness on their account.
On further examination, I found the clergy, in general, persons of
moderate minds and decorous manners: I include the seculars, and the
regulars of both sexes. I had not the good fortune to know a great many
of the parochial clergy: but