istinguish what is done in favor of their subdivision from those acts
of hostility which, through some particular description, are aimed at
the whole corps in which they themselves, under another denomination,
are included. It is impossible for me to say what may be the character
of every description of men amongst us. But I speak for the greater
part; and for them, I must tell you, that sacrilege is no part of their
doctrine of good works; that, so far from calling you into their
fellowship on such title, if your professors are admitted to their
communion, they must carefully conceal their doctrine of the lawfulness
of the proscription of innocent men, and that they must make restitution
of all stolen goods whatsoever. Till then they are none of ours.

You may suppose that we do not approve your confiscation of the revenues
of bishops, and deans, and chapters, and parochial clergy possessing
independent estates arising from land, because we have the same sort of
establishment in England. That objection, you will say, cannot hold as
to the confiscation of the goods of monks and nuns, and the abolition of
their order. It is true that this particular part of your general
confiscation does not affect England, as a precedent in point; but the
reason applies, and it goes a great way. The Long Parliament confiscated
the lands of deans and chapters in England on the same ideas upon which
your Assembly set to sale the lands of the monastic orders. But it is in
the principle of injustice that the danger lies, and not in the
description of persons on whom it is first exercised. I see, in a
country very near us, a course of policy pursued, which sets justice,
the common concern of mankind, at defiance. With the National Assembly
of France possession is nothing, law and usage are nothing. I see the
National Assembly openly reprobate the doctrine of prescription, which
one of the greatest of their own lawyers[114] tells us, with great
truth, is a part of the law of Nature. He tells us that the positive
ascertainment of its limits, and its security from invasion, were among
the causes for which civil society itself has been instituted. If
prescription be once shaken, no species of property is secure, when it
once becomes an object large enough to tempt the cupidity of indigent
power. I see a practice perfectly correspondent to their contempt of
this great fundamental part of natural law. I see the confiscators begin
with bishops, and