present case, perhaps, they
are not upon a par, and the difference is in favor of the possession. It
does not appear to me that the expenses of those whom you are going to
expel do in fact take a course so directly and so generally leading to
vitiate and degrade and render miserable those through whom they pass as
the expenses of those favorites whom you are intruding into their
houses. Why should the expenditure of a great landed property, which is
a dispersion of the surplus product of the soil, appear intolerable to
you or to me, when it takes its course through the accumulation of vast
libraries, which are the history of the force and weakness of the human
mind,--through great collections of ancient records, medals, and coins,
which attest and explain laws and customs,--through paintings and
statues, that, by imitating Nature, seem to extend the limits of
creation,--through grand monuments of the dead, which continue the
regards and connections of life beyond the grave,--through collections
of the specimens of Nature, which become a representative assembly of
all the classes and families of the world, that by disposition
facilitate, and by exciting curiosity open, the avenues to science? If
by great permanent establishments all these objects of expense are
better secured from the inconstant sport of personal caprice and
personal extravagance, are they worse than if the same tastes prevailed
in scattered individuals? Does not the sweat of the mason and carpenter,
who toil in order to partake the sweat of the peasant, flow as
pleasantly and as salubriously in the construction and repair of the
majestic edifices of religion as in the painted booths and sordid sties
of vice and luxury? as honorably and as profitably in repairing those
sacred works which grow hoary with innumerable years as on the momentary
receptacles of transient voluptuousness,--in opera-houses, and brothels,
and gaming-houses, and club-houses, and obelisks in the Champ de Mars?
Is the surplus product of the olive and the vine worse employed in the
frugal sustenance of persons whom the fictions of a pious imagination
raise to dignity by construing in the service of God than in pampering
the innumerable multitude of those who are degraded by being made
useless domestics, subservient to the pride of man? Are the decorations
of temples an expenditure less worthy a wise man than ribbons, and
laces, and national cockades, and petit maisons, and petit souper