106 Soles of I he Monfh on C^K*?. 



nny way he likes, and be discharged from any support of any regular 

 place of worship. Of course, in a few years the buildings for national 

 worship must go to decay ; and if a few spruce chapels be raised by a 

 few speculators or devotees, they will not contain a thousandth part of 

 the population, even if they were willing to go to church, which they 

 will not be. In a few years, the young generation will start into man- 

 hood ; and as they have been educated without the decent habits of 

 religious observance, they will not begin to learn them then. Even for 

 the last ten years,, scarcely any MEN went to church : the seats were occu- 

 pied by women, and the men went whistling about the streets, or went 

 to their regular weekly labours, on the Sunday. The preachers sent by 

 the government through the provinces to recal the peasantry to their 

 former habits, were generally a mere matter of scoffing and insult, 

 though many of the " missionaries/' as they were termed, were able 

 men, and some, of singular eloquence. In the course of a few years, if 

 those feelings continue, France will be a nation of atheists, which, by 

 all accounts, it very nearly is already ; and as the atheist acknowledges 

 no restraint of conscience, and can have no fear of a superior power, or 

 of a future, the only question will be of force against force : in other 

 words, civil war, terminating in convulsions of all kinds. 



Another source of the impending ruin is, the state of property. In 

 France the law of primogeniture is abolished, and every man is com- 

 pelled to give an equal portion of his property to each of his children. 

 By this means, the disobedient child is just as much encouraged as the 

 obedient. And, as the money laid out on a child's education, or advanced 

 for putting him into any peculiar line of life, professional or otherwise, 

 is not allowed in the distribution of the property, but each demands his 

 equal portion still, it is almost the interest of a parent to give his 

 children no education or employment that can cost any thing, as it is 

 giving him his portion twice over. But the evil operates inevitably in a 

 national scale, by utterly destroying all the higher order of France. 

 In England, by giving the estate to the elder son, that estate is kept 

 together; an aristocracy is formed, by which the peerage is supplied, 

 and a most important branch of the legislature, as a protection between 

 the power of the crown, and the rashness of a merely popular assembly, 

 is kept in existence. 



But even to the younger children of the peer, the existence of a 

 certain rank and estate in the family, is of the first importance. By 

 having a brother a man of acknowledged rank, the whole family share 

 his distinction in society ; they are also supported in their several pur- 

 suits by his influence ; and they make more honourable connections ; 

 and, as in general, the estate is liable to pass from one branch to another, 

 the youngest brother of a great family has his chance of attaining the 

 hereditary honours. Thus the great families are preserved from being 

 lost, by the preservation of their properties under one head ; and the 

 estate which, frittered away among a dozen children, would make for 

 each but a pitiful provision perhaps just enough to keep them in idle- 

 ness, and thereby preclude them from any honourable exertion becomes 

 a source of present rank and assistance to. every member of the family, 

 and frequently of future possession. 



But, in France, all the great families must, before a quarter of a cen- 

 tury, be extinguished, if the present law continues. A duke with but 

 1,500 a-year, is no duke at oil, but a beggar; and if he expects to 



