dreadful revolution; and one to which a virtu|ous mind would feel pain in condemning any guilt except that which would demand the life of the offender. But to many minds this punish|ment of degradation and infamy is worse than death. Undoubtedly it is an infinite aggravation of this cruel suffering, that the persons who were taught a double prejudice in favour of religion, by education and by the place they held in the administration of its functions, are to receive the remnants of their property as alms from the pro|fane and impious hands of those who had plun|dered them of all the rest; to receive, not from the charitable contributions of the faithful, but from the insolent tenderness of known and avow|ed Atheism, the maintenance of religion, mea|sured out to them on the standard of the con|tempt in which it is held; and for the purpose of rendering those who receive the allowance vile and of no estimation in the eyes of man|kind.
But this act of seizure of property, it seems, is a judgment in law, and not a confisca|tion. They have, it seems, found out in the academies of the Palais Royale, and the Ja|cobins, that certain men had no right to the possessions which they held under law, usage, the decisions of courts, and the accumulated pre|scription of a thousand years. They say that ecclesiastics are fictitious persons, creatures of the state; whom at pleasure they may destroy, and of course limit and modify in every particu|lar; that the goods they possess are not pro|perly
