If the injustice of the course pursued in France be clear, the policy of the measure, that is, the public benefit to be expected from it, ought to be at least as evident, and at least as important.  To a man who acts under the influence of no passion, who has nothing in view in his projects but the public good, a great difference will immediately strike him, between what policy would dictate on the original introduction of such institutions, and on a question of their total abolition, where they have cast their roots wide and deep, and where, by long habit, things more valuable than themselves are so adapted to them, and in a manner interwoven with them, that the one cannot be destroyed without notably impairing the other.  He might be embarrassed, if the case were really such as sophisters represent it in their paltry style of debating.  But in this, as in most questions of state, there is a middle.  There is something else than the mere alternative of absolute destruction or unreformed existence. Spartam nactus es; hanc exorna.  This is, in my opinion, a rule of profound sense, and ought never to depart from the mind of an honest reformer.  I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases.  A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it; but a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country.  A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.  Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.

There are moments in the fortune of states, when particular men are called to make improvements by great mental exertion.  In those moments, even when they seem to enjoy the confidence of their prince and country, and to be invested with full authority, they have not always apt instruments.  A politician, to do great things, looks for a power, what our workmen call a purchase; and if he finds that power, in politics as in mechanics, he cannot be at a loss to apply it.  In the monastic institutions, in my opinion, was found a great power for the mechanism of politic benevolence.  There were revenues with a public direction; there were men wholly set apart and dedicated to public purposes, without any other than public ties and public principles,—­men without the possibility of converting the estate of the community into a private fortune,—­men denied to self-interests, whose avarice is for some community,—­men to whom personal poverty is honor, and implicit obedience stands in the place of freedom.  In vain shall a man look to the possibility of making such things when he wants them.  The winds blow as they list.  These institutions are the products of enthusiasm; they are the instruments