nations who overturned the Roman empire, Latin gradually ceased to be the
      language of any part of Europe. But the reverence of the people naturally
      preserves the established forms and ceremonies of religion long after the
      circumstances which first introduced and rendered them reasonable, are no
      more. Though Latin, therefore, was no longer understood anywhere by the
      great body of the people, the whole service of the church still continued
      to be performed in that language. Two different languages were thus
      established in Europe, in the same manner as in ancient Egypt: a language
      of the priests, and a language of the people; a sacred and a profane, a
      learned and an unlearned language. But it was necessary that the priests
      should understand something of that sacred and learned language in which
      they were to officiate; and the study of the Latin language therefore
      made, from the beginning, an essential part of university education.

      It was not so with that either of the Greek or of the Hebrew language. The
      infallible decrees of the church had pronounced the Latin translation of
      the Bible, commonly called the Latin Vulgate, to have been equally
      dictated by divine inspiration, and therefore of equal authority with the
      Greek and Hebrew originals. The knowledge of those two languages,
      therefore, not being indispensably requisite to a churchman, the study of
      them did not for along time make a necessary part of the common course of
      university education. There are some Spanish universities, I am assured,
      in which the study of the Greek language has never yet made any part of
      that course. The first reformers found the Greek text of the New
      Testament, and even the Hebrew text of the Old, more favourable to their
      opinions than the vulgate translation, which, as might naturally be
      supposed, had been gradually accommodated to support the doctrines of the
      Catholic Church. They set themselves, therefore, to expose the many errors
      of that translation, which the Roman catholic clergy were thus put under
      the necessity of defending or explaining. But this could not well be done
      without some knowledge of the original languages, of which the study was
      therefore gradually introduced into the greater part of universities; both
      of those which embraced, and of those which rejected, the doctrines of the
      reformation. The Greek language was connected with every part of that
      classical learning, which, though at first principally cultivated by
      catholics and Italians, happened to come into fashion much about the same
      time that the doctrines of the reformation were set on foot. In the
      greater part of universities, therefore, that language was taught previous
      to the study of philosophy, and as soon as the student had made some
      progress in the Latin. The Hebrew language having no connection with
      classical learning, and, except the Holy Scriptures, being the language of
      not a single book in any esteem the study of it did not commonly commence
      till after that of philosophy, and when the student had entered upon the
      study of theology.

      Originally, the first rudiments, both of the Greek and Latin languages,
      were taught in universities; and in some universities they still continue
      to be so. In others, it is expected that the student should have
      previously acquired, at least, the rudiments of one or both of those
      languages, of which the study continues to make everywhere a very
      considerable part of university education.

      The ancient Greek philosophy was divided into three great branches;
      physics, or natural philosophy; ethics, or moral philosophy; and logic.
      This general division seems perfectly agreeable to the nature of things.

      The great phenomena of nature, the revolutions of the heavenly bodies,
      eclipses, comets; thunder and lightning, and other extraordinary meteors;
      the generation, the life, growth, and dissolution of plants and animals;
      are objects which, as they necessarily excite the wonder, so they
      naturally call forth the curiosity of mankind to inquire into their
      causes. Superstition first attempted to satisfy this curiosity, by
      referring all those wonderful appearances to the immediate agency of the
      gods. Philosophy afterwards endeavoured to account for them from more
      familiar causes, or from such as mankind were better acquainted with, than
      the agency of the gods. As those great phenomena are the first objects of
      human curiosity, so the science which pretends to explain them must
      naturally have been the first branch of philosophy that was cultivated.
      The first philosophers, accordingly, of whom history has preserved any
      account, appear to have been natural philosophers.

      In every age and country of the world, men must have attended to the
      characters, designs, and actions of one another; and many reputable rules
      and maxims for the conduct of human life must have been laid down and
      approved of by common consent. As soon as writing came into fashion, wise
      men, or those who fancied themselves such, would naturally endeavour to
      increase the number of those established and respected maxims, and to
      express their own sense of what was either proper or improper conduct,
      sometimes in the more artificial form of apologues, like what are called
      the fables of Aesop; and sometimes in the more simple one of apophthegms
      or wise sayings, like the proverbs of Solomon, the verses of Theognis and
      Phocyllides, and some part of the works of Hesiod. They might continue in
      this manner, for a long time, merely to multiply the number of those
      maxims of prudence and morality, without even attempting to arrange them
      in any very distinct or methodical order, much less to connect them
      together by one or more general principles, from which they were all
      deducible, like effects from their natural causes. The beauty of a
      systematical arrangement of different observations, connected by a few
      common principles, was first seen in the rude essays of those ancient
      times towards a system of natural philosophy. Something of the same kind
      was afterwards attempted in morals. The maxims of common life were
      arranged in some methodical order, and connected together by a few common
      principles, in the same manner as they had attempted to arrange and
      connect the phenomena of nature. The science which pretends to investigate
      and explain those connecting principles, is what is properly called Moral
      Philosophy.

      Different authors gave different systems, both of natural and moral
      philosophy. But the arguments by which they supported those different
      systems, far from being always demonstrations, were frequently at best but
      very slender probabilities, and sometimes mere sophisms, which had no
      other foundation but the inaccuracy and ambiguity of common language.
      Speculative systems, have, in all ages of the world, been adopted for
      reasons too frivolous to have determined the judgment of any man of common
      sense, in a matter of the smallest pecuniary interest. Gross sophistry has
      scarce ever had any influence upon the opinions of mankind, except in
      matters of philosophy and speculation; and in these it has frequently had
      the greatest. The patrons of each system of natural and moral philosophy,
      naturally endeavoured to expose the weakness of the arguments adduced to
      support the systems which were opposite to their own. In examining those
      arguments, they were necessarily led to consider the difference between a
      probable and a demonstrative argument, between a fallacious and a
      conclusive one; and logic, or the science of the general principles of
      good and bad reasoning, necessarily arose out of the observations which a
      scrutiny of this kind gave occasion to; though, in its origin, posterior
      both to physics and to ethics, it was commonly taught, not indeed in all,
      but in the greater part of the ancient schools of philosophy, previously
      to either of those sciences. The student, it seems to have been thought,
      ought to understand well the difference between good and bad reasoning,
      before he was led to reason upon subjects of so great importance.

      This ancient division of philosophy into three parts was, in the greater
      part of the universities of Europe, changed for another into five.

      In the ancient philosophy, whatever was taught concerning the nature
      either of the human mind or of the Deity, made a part of the system of
      physics. Those beings, in whatever their essence might be supposed to
      consist, were parts of the great system of the universe, and parts, too,
      productive of the most important effects. Whatever human reason could
      either conclude or conjecture concerning them, made, as it were, two
      chapters, though no doubt two very important ones, of the science which
      pretended to give an account of the origin and revolutions of the great
      system of the universe. But in the universities of Europe, where
      philosophy was taught only as subservient to theology, it was natural to
      dwell longer upon these two chapters than upon any other of the science.
      They were gradually more and more extended, and were divided into many
      inferior chapters; till at last the doctrine of spirits, of which so
      little can be known, came to take up as much room in the system of
      philosophy as the doctrine of bodies, of which so much can be known. The
      doctrines concerning those two subjects were considered as making two
      distinct sciences. What are called metaphysics, or pneumatics, were set in
      opposition to physics, and were cultivated not only as the more sublime,
      but, for the purposes of a particular profession, as the more useful
      science of the two. The proper subject of experiment and observation, a
      subject in which a careful attention is capable of making so many useful
      discoveries, was almost entirely neglected. The subject in which, after a
      very few simple and almost obvious truths, the most careful attention can
      discover nothing but obscurity and uncertainty, and can consequently
      produce nothing but subtleties and sophisms, was greatly cultivated.

      When those two sciences had thus been set in opposition to one another,
      the comparison between them naturally gave birth to a third, to what was
      called ontology, or the science which treated of the qualities and
      attributes which were common to both the subjects of the other two
      sciences. But if subtleties and sophisms composed the greater part of the
      metaphysics or pneumatics of the schools, they composed the whole of this
      cobweb science of ontology, which was likewise sometimes called
      metaphysics.

      Wherein consisted the happiness and perfection of a man, considered not
      only as an individual, but as the member of a family, of a state, and of
      the great society of mankind, was the object which the ancient moral
      philosophy proposed to investigate. In that philosophy, the duties of
      human life were treated of as subservient to the happiness and perfection
      of human life, But when moral, as well as natural philosophy, came to be
      taught only as subservient to theology, the duties of human life were
      treated of as chiefly subservient to the happiness of a life to come. In
      the ancient philosophy, the perfection of virtue was represented as
      necessarily productive, to the person who possessed it, of the most
      perfect happiness in this life. In the modern philosophy, it was
      frequently represented as generally, or rather as almost always,
      inconsistent with any degree of happiness in this life; and heaven was to
      be earned only by penance and mortification, by the austerities and
      abasement of a monk, not by the liberal, generous, and spirited conduct of
      a man. Casuistry, and an ascetic morality, made up, in most cases, the
      greater part of the moral philosophy of the schools. By far the most
      important of all the different branches of philosophy became in this
      manner by far the most corrupted.

      Such, therefore, was the common course of philosophical education in the
      greater part of the universities in Europe. Logic was taught first;
      ontology came in the second place; pneumatology, comprehending the
      doctrine concerning the nature of the human soul and of the Deity, in the
      third; in the fourth followed a debased system of moral philosophy, which
      was considered as immediately connected with the doctrines of
      pneumatology, with the immortality of the human soul, and with the rewards
      and punishments which, from the justice of the Deity, were to be expected
      in a life to come: a short and superficial system of physics usually
      concluded the course.

      The alterations which the universities of Europe thus introduced into the
      ancient course of philosophy were all meant for the education of
      ecclesiastics, and to render it a more proper introduction to the study of
      theology. But the additional quantity of subtlety and sophistry, the
      casuistry and ascetic morality which those alterations introduced into it,
      certainly did not render it more for the education of gentlemen or men of
      the world, or more likely either to improve the understanding or to mend
      the heart.

      This course of philosophy is what still continues to be taught in the
      greater part of the universities of Europe, with more or less diligence,
      according as the constitution of each particular university happens to
      render diligence more or less necessary to the teachers. In some of the
      richest and best endowed universities, the tutors content themselves with
      teaching a few unconnected shreds and parcels of this corrupted course;
      and even these they commonly teach very negligently and superficially.

      The improvements which, in modern times have been made in several
      different branches of philosophy, have not, the greater part of them, been
      made in universities, though some, no doubt, have. The greater part of
      universities have not even been very forward to adopt those improvements
      after they were made; and several of those learned societies have chosen
      to remain, for a long time, the sanctuaries in which exploded systems and
      obsolete prejudices found shelter and protection, after they had been
      hunted out of every other corner of the world. In general, the richest and
      best endowed universities have been slowest in adopting those
      improvements, and the most averse to permit any considerable change in the
      established plan of education. Those improvements were more easily
      introduced into some of the poorer universities, in which the teachers,
      depending upon their reputation for the greater part of their subsistence,
      were obliged to pay more attention to the current opinions of the world.

      But though the public schools and universities of Europe were originally
      intended only for the education of a particular profession, that of
      churchmen; and though they were not always very diligent in instructing
      their pupils, even in the sciences which were supposed necessary for that
      profession; yet they gradually drew to themselves the education of almost
      all other people, particularly of almost all gentlemen and men of fortune.
      No better method, it seems, could be fallen upon, of spending, with any
      advantage, the long interval between infancy and that period of life at
      which men begin to apply in good earnest to the real business of the
      world, the business which is to employ them during the remainder of their
      days. The greater part of what is taught in schools and universities,
      however, does not seem to be the most proper preparation for that
      business.

      In England, it becomes every day more and more the custom to send young
      people to travel in foreign countries immediately upon their leaving
      school, and without sending them to any university. Our young people, it
      is said, generally return home much improved by their travels. A young
      man, who goes abroad at seventeen or eighteen, and returns home at
      one-and-twenty, returns three or four years older than he was when he went
      abroad; and at that age it is very difficult not to improve a good deal in
      three or four years. In the course of his travels, he generally acquires
      some knowledge of one or two foreign languages; a knowledge, however,
      which is seldom sufficient to enable him either to speak or write them
      with propriety. In other respects, he commonly returns home more
      conceited, more unprincipled, more dissipated, and more incapable of my
      serious application, either to study or to business, than he could well
      have become in so short a time had he lived at home. By travelling so very
      young, by spending in the most frivolous dissipation the most precious
      years of his life, at a distance from the inspection and control of his
      parents and relations, every useful habit, which the earlier parts of his
      education might have had some tendency to form in him, instead of being
      riveted and confirmed, is almost necessarily either weakened or effaced.
      Nothing but the discredit into which the universities are allowing
      themselves to fall, could ever have brought into repute so very absurd a
      practice as that of travelling at this early period of life. By sending
      his son abroad, a father delivers himself, at least for some time, from so
      disagreeable an object as that of a son unemployed, neglected, and going
      to ruin before his eyes.

      Such have been the effects of some of the modern institutions for
      education.

      Different plans and different institutions for education seem to have
      taken place in other ages and nations.

      In the republics of ancient Greece, every free citizen was instructed,
      under the direction of the public magistrate, in gymnastic exercises and
      in music. By gymnastic exercises, it was intended to harden his body, to
      sharpen his courage, and to prepare him for the fatigues and dangers of
      war; and as the Greek militia was, by all accounts, one of the best that
      ever was in the world, this part of their public education must have
      answered completely the purpose for which it was intended. By the other
      part, music, it was proposed, at least by the philosophers and historians,
      who have given us an account of those institutions, to humanize the mind,
      to soften the temper, and to dispose it for performing all the social and
      moral duties of public and private life.

      In ancient Rome, the exercises of the Campus Martius answered the same
      purpose as those of the Gymnasium in ancient Greece, and they seem to have
      answered it equally well. But among the Romans there was nothing which
      corresponded to the musical education of the Greeks. The morals of the
      Romans, however, both in private and public life, seem to have been, not
      only equal, but, upon the whole, a good deal superior to those of the
      Greeks. That they were superior in private life, we have the express
      testimony of Polybius, and of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, two authors well
      acquainted with both nations; and the whole tenor of the Greek and Roman
      history bears witness to the superiority of the public morals of the
      Romans. The good temper and moderation of contending factions seem to be
      the most essential circumstances in the public morals of a free people.
      But the factions of the Greeks were almost always violent and sanguinary;
      whereas, till the time of the Gracchi, no blood had ever been shed in any
      Roman faction; and from the time of the Gracchi, the Roman republic may be
      considered as in reality dissolved. Notwithstanding, therefore, the very
      respectable authority of Plato, Aristotle, and Polybius, and
      notwithstanding the very ingenious reasons by which Mr. Montesquieu
      endeavours to support that authority, it seems probable that the musical
      education of the Greeks had no great effect in mending their morals,
      since, without any such education, those of the Romans were, upon the
      whole, superior. The respect of those ancient sages for the institutions
      of their ancestors had probably disposed them to find much political
      wisdom in what was, perhaps, merely an ancient custom, continued, without
      interruption, from the earliest period of those societies, to the times in
      which they had arrived at a considerable degree of refinement. Music and
      dancing are the great amusements of almost all barbarous nations, and the
      great accomplishments which are supposed to fit any man for entertaining
      his society. It is so at this day among the negroes on the coast of
      Africa. It was so among the ancient Celtes, among the ancient
      Scandinavians, and, as we may learn from Homer, among the ancient Greeks,
      in the times preceding the Trojan war. When the Greek tribes had formed
      themselves into little republics, it was natural that the study of those
      accomplishments should for a long time make a part of the public and
      common education of the people.

      The masters who instructed the young people, either in music or in
      military exercises, do not seem to have been paid, or even appointed by
      the state, either in Rome or even at Athens, the Greek republic of whose
      laws and customs we are the best informed. The state required that every
      free citizen should fit himself for defending it in war, and should upon
      that account, learn his military exercises. But it left him to learn them
      of such masters as he could find; and it seems to have advanced nothing
      for this purpose, but a public field or place of exercise, in which he
      should practise and perform them.

      In the early ages, both of the Greek and Roman republics, the other parts
      of education seem to have consisted in learning to read, write, and
      account, according to the arithmetic of the times. These accomplishments
      the richer citizens seem frequently to have acquired at home, by the
      assistance of some domestic pedagogue, who was, generally, either a slave
      or a freedman; and the poorer citizens in the schools of such masters as
      made a trade of teaching for hire. Such parts of education, however, were
      abandoned altogether to the care of the parents or guardians of each
      individual. It does not appear that the state ever assumed any inspection
      or direction of them. By a law of Solon, indeed, the children were
      acquitted from maintaining those parents who had neglected to instruct
      them in some profitable trade or business.

      In the progress of refinement, when philosophy and rhetoric came into
      fashion, the better sort of people used to send their children to the
      schools of philosophers and rhetoricians, in order to be instructed in
      these fashionable sciences. But those schools were not supported by the
      public. They were, for a long time, barely tolerated by it. The demand for
      philosophy and rhetoric was, for a long time, so small, that the first
      professed teachers of either could not find constant employment in any one
      city, but were obliged to travel about from place to place. In this manner
      lived Zeno of Elea, Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, and many others. As the
      demand increased, the school, both of philosophy and rhetoric, became
      stationary, first in Athens, and afterwards in several other cities. The
      state, however, seems never to have encouraged them further, than by
      assigning to some of them a particular place to teach in, which was
      sometimes done, too, by private donors. The state seems to have assigned
      the Academy to Plato, the Lyceum to Aristotle, and the Portico to Zeno of
      Citta, the founder of the Stoics. But Epicurus bequeathed his gardens to
      his own school. Till about the time of Marcus Antoninus, however, no
      teacher appears to have had any salary from the public, or to have had any
      other emoluments, but what arose from the honorarius or fees of his
      scholars. The bounty which that philosophical emperor, as we learn from
      Lucian, bestowed upon one of the teachers of philosophy, probably lasted
      no longer than his own life. There was nothing equivalent to the
      privileges of graduation; and to have attended any of those schools was
      not necessary, in order to be permitted to practise any particular trade
      or profession. If the opinion of their own utility could not draw scholars
      to them, the law neither forced anybody to go to them, nor rewarded
      anybody for having gone to them. The teachers had no jurisdiction over
      their pupils, nor any other authority besides that natural authority which
      superior virtue and abilities never fail to procure from young people
      towards those who are entrusted with any part of their education.

      At Rome, the study of the civil law made a part of the education, not of
      the greater part of the citizens, but of some particular families. The
      young people, however, who wished to acquire knowledge in the law, had no
      public school to go to, and had no other method of studying it, than by
      frequenting the company of such of their relations and friends as were
      supposed to understand it. It is, perhaps, worth while to remark, that
      though the laws of the twelve tables were many of them copied from those
      of some ancient Greek republics, yet law never seems to have grown up to
      be a science in any republic of ancient Greece. In Rome it became a
      science very early, and gave a considerable degree of illustration to
      those citizens who had the reputation of understanding it. In the
      republics of ancient Greece, particularly in Athens, the ordinary courts
      of justice consisted of numerous, and therefore disorderly, bodies of
      people, who frequently decided almost at random, or as clamour, faction,
      and party-spirit, happened to determine. The ignominy of an unjust
      decision, when it was to be divided among five hundred, a thousand, or
      fifteen hundred people (for some of their courts were so very numerous),
      could not fall very heavy upon any individual. At Rome, on the contrary,
      the principal courts of justice consisted either of a single judge, or of
      a small number of judges, whose characters, especially as they deliberated
      always in public, could not fail to be very much affected by any rash or
      unjust decision. In doubtful cases such courts, from their anxiety to
      avoid blame, would naturally endeavour to shelter themselves under the
      example or precedent of the judges who had sat before them, either in the
      same or in some other court. This attention to practice and precedent,
      necessarily formed the Roman law into that regular and orderly system in
      which it has been delivered down to us; and the like attention has had the
      like effects upon the laws of every other country where such attention has
      taken place. The superiority of character in the Romans over that of the
      Greeks, so much remarked by Polybius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, was
      probably more owing to the better constitution of their courts of justice,
      than to any of the circumstances to which those authors ascribe it. The
      Romans are said to have been particularly distinguished for their superior
      respect to an oath. But the people who were accustomed to make oath only
      before some diligent and well informed court of justice, would naturally
      be much more attentive to what they swore, than they who were accustomed
      to do the same thing before mobbish and disorderly assemblies.

      The abilities, both civil and military, of the Greeks and Romans, will
      readily be allowed to have been at least equal to those of any modern
      nation. Our prejudice is perhaps rather to overrate them. But except in
      what related to military exercises, the state seems to have been at no
      pains to form those great abilities; for I cannot be induced to believe
      that the musical education of the Greeks could be of much consequence in
      forming them. Masters, however, had been found, it seems, for instructing
      the better sort of people among those nations, in every art and science in
      which the circumstances of their society rendered it necessary or
      convenient for them to be instructed. The demand for such instruction
      produced, what it always produces, the talent for giving it; and the
      emulation which an unrestrained competition never fails to excite, appears
      to have brought that talent to a very high degree of perfection. In the
      attention which the ancient philosophers excited, in the empire which they
      acquired over the opinions and principles of their auditors, in the
      faculty which they possessed of giving a certain tone and character to the
      conduct and conversation of those auditors, they appear to have been much
      superior to any modern teachers. In modern times, the diligence of public
      teachers is more or less corrupted by the circumstances which render them
      more or less independent of their success and reputation in their
      particular professions. Their salaries, too, put the private teacher, who
      would pretend to come into competition with them, in the same state with a
      merchant who attempts to trade without a bounty, in competition with those
      who trade with a considerable one. If he sells his goods at nearly the
      same price, he cannot have the same profit; and poverty and beggary at
      least, if not bankruptcy and ruin, will infallibly be his lot. If he
      attempts to sell them much dearer, he is likely to have so few customers,
      that his circumstances will not be much mended. The privileges of
      graduation, besides, are in many countries necessary, or at least
      extremely convenient, to most men of learned professions, that is, to the
      far greater part of those who have occasion for a learned education. But
      those privileges can be obtained only by attending the lectures of the
      public teachers. The most careful attendance upon the ablest instructions
      of any private teacher cannot always give any title to demand them. It is
      from these different causes that the private teacher of any of the
      sciences, which are commonly taught in universities, is, in modern times,
      generally considered as in the very lowest order of men of letters. A man
      of real abilities can scarce find out a more humiliating or a more
      unprofitable employment to turn them to. The endowments of schools and
      colleges have in this manner not only corrupted the diligence of public
      teachers, but have rendered it almost impossible to have any good private
      ones.

      Were there no public institutions for education, no system, no science,
      would be taught, for which there was not some demand, or which the
      circumstances of the times did not render it either necessary or
      convenient, or at least fashionable to learn. A private teacher could
      never find his account in teaching either an exploded and antiquated
      system of a science acknowledged to be useful, or a science universally
      believed to be a mere useless and pedantic heap of sophistry and nonsense.
      Such systems, such sciences, can subsist nowhere but in those incorporated
      societies for education, whose prosperity and revenue are in a great
      measure independent of their industry. Were there no public institutions
      for education, a gentleman, after going through, with application and
      abilities, the most complete course of education which the circumstances
      of the times were supposed to afford, could not come into the world
      completely ignorant of everything which is the common subject of
      conversation among gentlemen and men of the world.

      There are no public institutions for the education of women, and there is
      accordingly nothing useless, absurd, or fantastical, in the common course
      of their education. They are taught what their parents or guardians judge
      it necessary or useful for them to learn, and they are taught nothing
      else. Every part of their education tends evidently to some useful
      purpose; either to improve the natural attractions of their person, or to
      form their mind to reserve, to modesty, to chastity, and to economy; to
      render them both likely to became the mistresses of a family, and to
      behave properly when they have become such. In every part of her life, a
      woman feels some conveniency or advantage from every part of her
      education. It seldom happens that a man, in any part of his life, derives
      any conveniency or advantage from some of the most laborious and
      troublesome parts of his education.

      Ought the public, therefore, to give no attention, it may be asked, to the
      education of the people? Or, if it ought to give any, what are the
      different parts of education which it ought to attend to in the different
      orders of the people? and in what manner ought it to attend to them?

      In some cases, the state of society necessarily places the greater part of
      individuals in such situations as naturally form in them, without any
      attention of government, almost all the abilities and virtues which that
      state requires, or perhaps can admit of. In other cases, the state of the
      society does not place the greater part of individuals in such situations;
      and some attention of government is necessary, in order to prevent the
      almost entire corruption and degeneracy of the great body of the people.

      In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far
      greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of
      the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations;
      frequently to one or two. But the understandings of the greater part of
      men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose
      whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the
      effects, too, are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no
      occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention, in
      finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He
      naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally
      becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to
      become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing
      or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any
      generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just
      judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of
      the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether
      incapable of judging; and unless very particular pains have been taken to
      render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in
      war. The uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage
      of his mind, and makes him regard, with abhorrence, the irregular,
      uncertain, and adventurous life of a soldier. It corrupts even the
      activity of his body, and renders him incapable of exerting his strength
      with vigour and perseverance in any other employment, than that to which
      he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this
      manner, to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and
      martial virtues. But in every improved and civilized society, this is the
      state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the
      people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to
      prevent it.

      It is otherwise in the barbarous societies, as they are commonly called,
      of hunters, of shepherds, and even of husbandmen in that rude state of
      husbandry which precedes the improvement of manufactures, and the
      extension of foreign commerce. In such societies, the varied occupations
      of every man oblige every man to exert his capacity, and to invent
      expedients for removing difficulties which are continually occurring.
      Invention is kept alive, and the mind is not suffered to fall into that
      drowsy stupidity, which, in a civilized society, seems to benumb the
      understanding of almost all the inferior ranks of people. In those
      barbarous societies, as they are called, every man, it has already been
      observed, is a warrior. Every man, too, is in some measure a statesman,
      and can form a tolerable judgment concerning the interest of the society,
      and the conduct of those who govern it. How far their chiefs are good
      judges in peace, or good leaders in war, is obvious to the observation of
      almost every single man among them. In such a society, indeed, no man can
      well acquire that improved and refined understanding which a few men
      sometimes possess in a more civilized state. Though in a rude society
      there is a good deal of variety in the occupations of every individual,
      there is not a great deal in those of the whole society. Every man does,
      or is capable of doing, almost every thing which any other man does, or is
      capable of being. Every man has a considerable degree of knowledge,
      ingenuity, and invention but scarce any man has a great degree. The
      degree, however, which is commonly possessed, is generally sufficient for
      conducting the whole simple business of the society. In a civilized state,
      on the contrary, though there is little variety in the occupations of the
      greater part of individuals, there is an almost infinite variety in those
      of the whole society. These varied occupations present an almost infinite
      variety of objects to the contemplation of those few, who, being attached
      to no particular occupation themselves, have leisure and inclination to
      examine the occupations of other people. The contemplation of so great a
      variety of objects necessarily exercises their minds in endless
      comparisons and combinations, and renders their understandings, in an
      extraordinary degree, both acute and comprehensive. Unless those few,
      however, happen to be placed in some very particular situations, their
      great abilities, though honourable to themselves, may contribute very
      little to the good government or happiness of their society.
      Notwithstanding the great abilities of those few, all the nobler parts of
      the human character may be, in a great measure, obliterated and
      extinguished in the great body of the people.

      The education of the common people requires, perhaps, in a civilized and
      commercial society, the attention of the public, more than that of people
      of some rank and fortune. People of some rank and fortune are generally
      eighteen or nineteen years of age before they enter upon that particular
      business, profession, or trade, by which they propose to distinguish
      themselves in the world. They have, before that, full time to acquire, or
      at least to fit themselves for afterwards acquiring, every accomplishment
      which can recommend them to the public esteem, or render them worthy of
      it. Their parents or guardians are generally sufficiently anxious that
      they should be so accomplished, and are in most cases, willing enough to
      lay out the expense which is necessary for that purpose. If they are not
      always properly educated, it is seldom from the want of expense laid out
      upon their education, but from the improper application of that expense.
      It is seldom from the want of masters, but from the negligence and
      incapacity of the masters who are to be had, and from the difficulty, or
      rather from the impossibility, which there is, in the present state of
      things, of finding any better. The employments, too, in which people of
      some rank or fortune spend the greater part of their lives, are not, like
      those of the common people, simple and uniform. They are almost all of
      them extremely complicated, and such as exercise the head more than the
      hands. The understandings of those who are engaged in such employments,
      can seldom grow torpid for want of exercise. The employments of people of
      some rank and fortune, besides, are seldom such as harass them from
      morning to night. They generally have a good deal of leisure, during which
      they may perfect themselves in every branch, either of useful or
      ornamental knowledge, of which they may have laid the foundation, or for
      which they may have acquired some taste in the earlier part of life.

      It is otherwise with the common people. They have little time to spare for
      education. Their parents can scarce afford to maintain them, even in
      infancy. As soon as they are able to work, they must apply to some trade,
      by which they can earn their subsistence. That trade, too, is generally so
      simple and uniform, as to give little exercise to the understanding;
      while, at the same time, their labour is both so constant and so severe,
      that it leaves them little leisure and less inclination to apply to, or
      even to think of any thing else.

      But though the common people cannot, in any civilized society, be so well
      instructed as people of some rank and fortune; the most essential parts of
      education, however, to read, write, and account, can be acquired at so
      early a period of life, that the greater part, even of those who are to be
      bred to the lowest occupations, have time to acquire them before they can
      be employed in those occupations. For a very small expense, the public can
      facilitate, can encourage and can even impose upon almost the whole body
      of the people, the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of
      education.

      The public can facilitate this acquisition, by establishing in every
      parish or district a little school, where children maybe taught for a
      reward so moderate, that even a common labourer may afford it; the master
      being partly, but not wholly, paid by the public; because, if he was
      wholly, or even principally, paid by it, he would soon learn to neglect
      his business. In Scotland, the establishment of such parish schools has
      taught almost the whole common people to read, and a very great proportion
      of them to write and account. In England, the establishment of charity
      schools has had an effect of the same kind, though not so universally,
      because the establishment is not so universal. If, in those little
      schools, the books by which the children are taught to read, were a little
      more instructive than they commonly are; and if, instead of a little
      smattering in Latin, which the children of the common people are sometimes
      taught there, and which can scarce ever be of any use to them, they were
      instructed in the elementary parts of geometry and mechanics; the literary
      education of this rank of people would, perhaps, be as complete as can be.
      There is scarce a common trade, which does not afford some opportunities
      of applying to it the principles of geometry and mechanics, and which
      would not, therefore, gradually exercise and improve the common people in
      those principles, the necessary introduction to the most sublime, as well
      as to the most useful sciences.

      The public can encourage the acquisition of those most essential parts of
      education, by giving small premiums, and little badges of distinction, to
      the children of the common people who excel in them.

      The public can impose upon almost the whole body of the people the
      necessity of acquiring the most essential parts of education, by obliging
      every man to undergo an examination or probation in them, before he can
      obtain the freedom in any corporation, or be allowed to set up any trade,
      either in a village or town corporate.

      It was in this manner, by facilitating the acquisition of their military
      and gymnastic exercises, by encouraging it, and even by imposing upon the
      whole body of the people the necessity of learning those exercises, that
      the Greek and Roman republics maintained the martial spirit of their
      respective citizens. They facilitated the acquisition of those exercises,
      by appointing a certain place for learning and practising them, and by
      granting to certain masters the privilege of teaching in that place. Those
      masters do not appear to have had either salaries or exclusive privileges
      of any kind. Their reward consisted altogether in what they got from their
      scholars; and a citizen, who had learnt his exercises in the public
      gymnasia, had no sort of legal advantage over one who had learnt them
      privately, provided the latter had learned them equally well. Those
      republics encouraged the acquisition of those exercises, by bestowing
      little premiums and badges of distinction upon those who excelled in them.
      To have gained a prize in the Olympic, Isthmian, or Nemaean games, gave
      illustration, not only to the person who gained it, but to his whole
      family and kindred. The obligation which every citizen was under, to serve
      a certain number of years, if called upon, in the armies of the republic,
      sufficiently imposed the necessity of learning those exercises, without
      which he could not be fit for that service.

      That in the progress of improvement, the practice of military exercises,
      unless government takes proper pains to support it, goes gradually to
      decay, and, together with it, the martial spirit of the great body of the
      people, the example of modern Europe sufficiently demonstrates. But the
      security of every society must always depend, more or less, upon the
      martial spirit of the great body of the people. In the present times,
      indeed, that martial spirit alone, and unsupported by a well-disciplined
      standing army, would not, perhaps, be sufficient for the defence and
      security of any society. But where every citizen had the spirit of a
      soldier, a smaller standing army would surely be requisite. That spirit,
      besides, would necessarily diminish very much the dangers to liberty,
      whether real or imaginary, which are commonly apprehended from a standing
      army. As it would very much facilitate the operations of that army against
      a foreign invader; so it would obstruct them as much, if unfortunately
      they should ever be directed against the constitution of the state.

      The ancient institutions of Greece and Rome seem to have been much more
      effectual for maintaining the martial spirit of the great body of the
      people, than the establishment of what are called the militias of modern
      times. They were much more simple. When they were once established, they
      executed themselves, and it required little or no attention from
      government to maintain them in the most perfect vigour. Whereas to
      maintain, even in tolerable execution, the complex regulations of any
      modern militia, requires the continual and painful attention of
      government, without which they are constantly falling into total neglect
      and disuse. The influence, besides, of the ancient institutions, was much
      more universal. By means of them, the whole body of the people was
      completely instructed in the use of arms; whereas it is but a very small
      part of them who can ever be so instructed by the regulations of any
      modern militia, except, perhaps, that of Switzerland. But a coward, a man
      incapable either of defending or of revenging himself, evidently wants one
      of the most essential parts of the character of a man. He is as much
      mutilated and deformed in his mind as another is in his body, who is
      either deprived of some of its most essential members, or has lost the use
      of them. He is evidently the more wretched and miserable of the two;
      because happiness and misery, which reside altogether in the mind, must
      necessarily depend more upon the healthful or unhealthful, the mutilated
      or entire state of the mind, than upon that of the body. Even though the
      martial spirit of the people were of no use towards the defence of the
      society, yet, to prevent that sort of mental mutilation, deformity, and
      wretchedness, which cowardice necessarily involves in it, from spreading
      themselves through the great body of the people, would still deserve the
      most serious attention of government; in the same manner as it would
      deserve its most serious attention to prevent a leprosy, or any other
      loathsome and offensive disease, though neither mortal nor dangerous, from
      spreading itself among them; though, perhaps, no other public good might
      result from such attention, besides the prevention of so great a public
      evil.

      The same thing may be said of the gross ignorance and stupidity which, in
      a civilized society, seem so frequently to benumb the understandings of
      all the inferior ranks of people. A man without the proper use of the
      intellectual faculties of a man, is, if possible, more contemptible than
      even a coward, and seems to be mutilated and deformed in a still more
      essential part of the character of human nature. Though the state was to
      derive no advantage from the instruction of the inferior ranks of people,
      it would still deserve its attention that they should not be altogether
      uninstructed. The state, however, derives no inconsiderable advantage from
      their instruction. The more they are instructed, the less liable they are
      to the delusions of enthusiasm and superstition, which, among ignorant
      nations frequently occasion the most dreadful disorders. An instructed and
      intelligent people, besides, are always more decent and orderly than an
      ignorant and stupid one. They feel themselves, each individually, more
      respectable, and more likely to obtain the respect of their lawful
      superiors, and they are, therefore, more disposed to respect those
      superiors. They are more disposed to examine, and more capable of seeing
      through, the interested complaints of faction and sedition; and they are,
      upon that account, less apt to be misled into any wanton or unnecessary
      opposition to the measures of government. In free countries, where the
      safety of government depends very much upon the favourable judgment which
      the people may form of its conduct, it must surely be of the highest
      importance, that they should not be disposed to judge rashly or
      capriciously concerning it.

      Art. III.—Of the Expense of the Institutions for the Instruction of
      People of all Ages.

      The institutions for the instruction of people of all ages, are chiefly
      those for religious instruction. This is a species of instruction, of
      which the object is not so much to render the people good citizens in this
      world, as to prepare them for another and a better world in the life to
      come. The teachers of the doctrine which contains this instruction, in the
      same manner as other teachers, may either depend altogether for their
      subsistence upon the voluntary contributions of their hearers; or they may
      derive it from some other fund, to which the law of their country may
      entitle them; such as a landed estate, a tythe or land tax, an established
      salary or stipend. Their exertion, their zeal and industry, are likely to
      be much greater in the former situation than in the latter. In this
      respect, the teachers of a new religion have always had a considerable
      advantage in attacking those ancient and established systems, of which the
      clergy, reposing themselves upon their benefices, had neglected to keep up
      the fervour of faith and devotion in the great body of the people; and
      having given themselves up to indolence, were become altogether incapable
      of making any vigorous exertion in defence even of their own
      establishment. The clergy of an established and well endowed religion
      frequently become men of learning and elegance, who possess all the
      virtues of gentlemen, or which can recommend them to the esteem of
      gentlemen; but they are apt gradually to lose the qualities, both good and
      bad, which gave them authority and influence with the inferior ranks of
      people, and which had perhaps been the original causes of the success and
      establishment of their religion. Such a clergy, when attacked by a set of
      popular and bold, though perhaps stupid and ignorant enthusiasts, feel
      themselves as perfectly defenceless as the indolent, effeminate, and full
      fed nations of the southern parts of Asia, when they were invaded by the
      active, hardy, and hungry Tartars of the north. Such a clergy, upon such
      an emergency, have commonly no other resource than to call upon the civil
      magistrate to persecute, destroy, or drive out their adversaries, as
      disturbers of the public peace. It was thus that the Roman catholic clergy
      called upon the civil magistrate to persecute the protestants, and the
      church of England to persecute the dissenters; and that in general every
      religious sect, when it has once enjoyed, for a century or two, the
      security of a legal establishment, has found itself incapable of making
      any vigorous defence against any new sect which chose to attack its
      doctrine or discipline. Upon such occasions, the advantage, in point of
      learning and good writing, may sometimes be on the side of the established
      church. But the arts of popularity, all the arts of gaining proselytes,
      are constantly on the side of its adversaries. In England, those arts have
      been long neglected by the well endowed clergy of the established church,
      and are at present chiefly cultivated by the dissenters and by the
      methodists. The independent provisions, however, which in many places have
      been made for dissenting teachers, by means of voluntary subscriptions, of
      trust rights, and other evasions of the law, seem very much to have abated
      the zeal and activity of those teachers. They have many of them become
      very learned, ingenious, and respectable men; but they have in general
      ceased to be very popular preachers. The methodists, without half the
      learning of the dissenters, are much more in vogue.

      In the church of Rome the industry and zeal of the inferior clergy are
      kept more alive by the powerful motive of self-interest, than perhaps in
      any established protestant church. The parochial clergy derive many of
      them, a very considerable part of their subsistence from the voluntary
      oblations of the people; a source of revenue, which confession gives them
      many opportunities of improving. The mendicant orders derive their whole
      subsistence from such oblations. It is with them as with the hussars and
      light infantry of some armies; no plunder, no pay. The parochial clergy
      are like those teachers whose reward depends partly upon their salary, and
      partly upon the fees or honoraries which they get from their pupils; and
      these must always depend, more or less, upon their industry and
      reputation. The mendicant orders are like those teachers whose subsistence
      depends altogether upon their industry. They are obliged, therefore, to
      use every art which can animate the devotion of the common people. The
      establishment of the two great mendicant orders of St Dominic and St.
      Francis, it is observed by Machiavel, revived, in the thirteenth and
      fourteenth centuries, the languishing faith and devotion of the catholic
      church. In Roman catholic countries, the spirit of devotion is supported
      altogether by the monks, and by the poorer parochial clergy. The great
      dignitaries of the church, with all the accomplishments of gentlemen and
      men of the world, and sometimes with those of men of learning, are careful
      to maintain the necessary discipline over their inferiors, but seldom give
      themselves any trouble about the instruction of the people.

      “Most of the arts and professions in a state,” says by far the most
      illustrious philosopher and historian of the present age, “are of such a
      nature, that, while they promote the interests of the society, they are
      also useful or agreeable to some individuals; and, in that case, the
      constant rule of the magistrate, except, perhaps, on the first
      introduction of any art, is, to leave the profession to itself, and trust
      its encouragement to the individuals who reap the benefit of it. The
      artizans, finding their profits to rise by the favour of their customers,
      increase, as much as possible, their skill and industry; and as matters
      are not disturbed by any injudicious tampering, the commodity is always
      sure to be at all times nearly proportioned to the demand.

      “But there are also some callings which, though useful and even necessary
      in a state, bring no advantage or pleasure to any individual; and the
      supreme power is obliged to alter its conduct with regard to the retainers
      of those professions. It must give them public encouragement in order to
      their subsistence; and it must provide against that negligence to which
      they will naturally be subject, either by annexing particular honours to
      profession, by establishing a long subordination of ranks, and a strict
      dependence, or by some other expedient. The persons employed in the
      finances, fleets, and magistracy, are instances of this order of men.

      “It may naturally be thought, at first sight, that the ecclesiastics
      belong to the first class, and that their encouragement, as well as that
      of lawyers and physicians, may safely be entrusted to the liberality of
      individuals, who are attached to their doctrines, and who find benefit or
      consolation from their spiritual ministry and assistance. Their industry
      and vigilance will, no doubt, be whetted by such an additional motive; and
      their skill in the profession, as well as their address in governing the
      minds of the people, must receive daily increase, from their increasing
      practice, study, and attention.

      “But if we consider the matter more closely, we shall find that this
      interested diligence of the clergy is what every wise legislator will
      study to prevent; because, in every religion except the true, it is highly
      pernicious, and it has even a natural tendency to pervert the truth, by
      infusing into it a strong mixture of superstition, folly, and delusion.
      Each ghostly practitioner, in order to render himself more precious and
      sacred in the eyes of his retainers, will inspire them with the most
      violent abhorrence of all other sects, and continually endeavour, by some
      novelty, to excite the languid devotion of his audience. No regard will be
      paid to truth, morals, or decency, in the doctrines inculcated. Every
      tenet will be adopted that best suits the disorderly affections of the
      human frame. Customers will be drawn to each conventicle by new industry
      and address, in practising on the passions and credulity of the populace.
      And, in the end, the civil magistrate will find that he has dearly paid
      for his intended frugality, in saving a fixed establishment for the
      priests; and that, in reality, the most decent and advantageous
      composition, which he can make with the spiritual guides, is to bribe
      their indolence, by assigning stated salaries to their profession, and
      rendering it superfluous for them to be farther active, than merely to
      prevent their flock from straying in quest of new pastors. And in this
      manner ecclesiastical establishments, though commonly they arose at first
      from religious views, prove in the end advantageous to the political
      interests of society.”

      But whatever may have been the good or bad effects of the independent
      provision of the clergy, it has, perhaps, been very seldom bestowed upon
      them from any view to those effects. Times of violent religious
      controversy have generally been times of equally violent political
      faction. Upon such occasions, each political party has either found it, or
      imagined it, for his interest, to league itself with some one or other of
      the contending religious sects. But this could be done only by adopting,
      or, at least, by favouring the tenets of that particular sect. The sect
      which had the good fortune to be leagued with the conquering party
      necessarily shared in the victory of its ally, by whose favour and
      protection it was soon enabled, in some degree, to silence and subdue all
      its adversaries. Those adversaries had generally leagued themselves with
      the enemies of the conquering party, and were, therefore the enemies of
      that party. The clergy of this particular sect having thus become complete
      masters of the field, and their influence and authority with the great
      body of the people being in its highest vigour, they were powerful enough
      to overawe the chiefs and leaders of their own party, and to oblige the
      civil magistrate to respect their opinions and inclinations. Their first
      demand was generally that he should silence and subdue all their
      adversaries; and their second, that he should bestow an independent
      provision on themselves. As they had generally contributed a good deal to
      the victory, it seemed not unreasonable that they should have some share
      in the spoil. They were weary, besides, of humouring the people, and of
      depending upon their caprice for a subsistence. In making this demand,
      therefore, they consulted their own ease and comfort, without troubling
      themselves about the effect which it might have, in future times, upon the
      influence and authority of their order. The civil magistrate, who could
      comply with their demand only by giving them something which he would have
      chosen much rather to take, or to keep to himself, was seldom very forward
      to grant it. Necessity, however, always forced him to submit at last,
      though frequently not till after many delays, evasions, and affected
      excuses.

      But if politics had never called in the aid of religion, had the
      conquering party never adopted the tenets of one sect more than those of
      another, when it had gained the victory, it would probably have dealt
      equally and impartially with all the different sects, and have allowed
      every man to choose his own priest, and his own religion, as he thought
      proper. There would, and, in this case, no doubt, have been, a great
      multitude of religious sects. Almost every different congregation might
      probably have had a little sect by itself, or have entertained some
      peculiar tenets of its own. Each teacher, would, no doubt, have felt
      himself under the necessity of making the utmost exertion, and of using
      every art, both to preserve and to increase the number of his disciples.
      But as every other teacher would have felt himself under the same
      necessity, the success of no one teacher, or sect of teachers, could have
      been very great. The interested and active zeal of religious teachers can
      be dangerous and troublesome only where there is either but one sect
      tolerated in the society, or where the whole of a large society is divided
      into two or three great sects; the teachers of each acting by concert, and
      under a regular discipline and subordination. But that zeal must be
      altogether innocent, where the society is divided into two or three
      hundred, or, perhaps, into as many thousand small sects, of which no one
      could be considerable enough to disturb the public tranquillity. The
      teachers of each sect, seeing themselves surrounded on all sides with more
      adversaries than friends, would be obliged to learn that candour and
      moderation which are so seldom to be found among the teachers of those
      great sects, whose tenets, being supported by the civil magistrate, are
      held in veneration by almost all the inhabitants of extensive kingdoms and
      empires, and who, therefore, see nothing round them but followers,
      disciples, and humble admirers. The teachers of each little sect, finding
      themselves almost alone, would be obliged to respect those of almost every
      other sect; and the concessions which they would mutually find in both
      convenient and agreeable to make one to another, might in time, probably
      reduce the doctrine of the greater part of them to that pure and rational
      religion, free from every mixture of absurdity, imposture, or fanaticism,
      such as wise men have, in all ages of the world, wished to see
      established; but such as positive law has, perhaps, never yet established,
      and probably never will establish in any country; because, with regard to
      religion, positive law always has been, and probably always will be, more
      or less influenced by popular superstition and enthusiasm. This plan of
      ecclesiastical government, or, more properly, of no ecclesiastical
      government, was what the sect called Independents (a sect, no doubt, of
      very wild enthusiasts), proposed to establish in England towards the end
      of the civil war. If it had been established, though of a very
      unphilosophical origin, it would probably, by this time, have been
      productive of the most philosophical good temper and moderation with
      regard to every sort of religious principle. It has been established in
      Pennsylvania, where, though the quakers happen to be the most numerous,
      the law, in reality, favours no one sect more than another; and it is
      there said to have been productive of this philosophical good temper and
      moderation.

      But though this equality of treatment should not be productive of this
      good temper and moderation in all, or even in the greater part of the
      religious sects of a particular country; yet, provided those sects were
      sufficiently numerous, and each of them consequently too small to disturb
      the public tranquillity, the excessive zeal of each for its particular
      tenets could not well be productive of any very hurtful effects, but, on
      the contrary, of several good ones; and if the government was perfectly
      decided, both to let them all alone, and to oblige them all to let alone
      one another, there is little danger that they would not of their own
      accord, subdivide themselves fast enough, so as soon to become
      sufficiently numerous.

      In every civilized society, in every society where the distinction of
      ranks has once been completely established, there have been always two
      different schemes or systems of morality current at the same time; of
      which the one may be called the strict or austere; the other the liberal,
      or, if you will, the loose system. The former is generally admired and
      revered by the common people; the latter is commonly more esteemed and
      adopted by what are called the people of fashion. The degree of
      disapprobation with which we ought to mark the vices of levity, the vices
      which are apt to arise from great prosperity, and from the excess of
      gaiety and good humour, seems to constitute the principal distinction
      between those two opposite schemes or systems. In the liberal or loose
      system, luxury, wanton, and even disorderly mirth, the pursuit of pleasure
      to some degree of intemperance, the breach of chastity, at least in one of
      the two sexes, etc. provided they are not accompanied with gross
      indecency, and do not lead to falsehood and injustice, are generally
      treated with a good deal of indulgence, and are easily either excused or
      pardoned altogether. In the austere system, on the contrary, those
      excesses are regarded with the utmost abhorrence and detestation. The
      vices of levity are always ruinous to the common people, and a single
      week’s thoughtlessness and dissipation is often sufficient to undo a poor
      workman for ever, and to drive him, through despair, upon committing the
      most enormous crimes. The wiser and better sort of the common people,
      therefore, have always the utmost abhorrence and detestation of such
      excesses, which their experience tells them are so immediately fatal to
      people of their condition. The disorder and extravagance of several years,
      on the contrary, will not always ruin a man of fashion; and people of that
      rank are very apt to consider the power of indulging in some degree of
      excess, as one of the advantages of their fortune; and the liberty of
      doing so without censure or reproach, as one of the privileges which
      belong to their station. In people of their own station, therefore, they
      regard such excesses with but a small degree of disapprobation, and
      censure them either very slightly or not at all.

      Almost all religious sects have begun among the common people, from whom
      they have generally drawn their earliest, as well as their most numerous
      proselytes. The austere system of morality has, accordingly, been adopted
      by those sects almost constantly, or with very few exceptions; for there
      have been some. It was the system by which they could best recommend
      themselves to that order of people, to whom they first proposed their plan
      of reformation upon what had been before established. Many of them,
      perhaps the greater part of them, have even endeavoured to gain credit by
      refining upon this austere system, and by carrying it to some degree of
      folly and extravagance; and this excessive rigour has frequently
      recommended them, more than any thing else, to the respect and veneration
      of the common people.

      A man of rank and fortune is, by his station, the distinguished member of
      a great society, who attend to every part of his conduct, and who thereby
      oblige him to attend to every part of it himself. His authority and
      consideration depend very much upon the respect which this society bears
      to him. He dares not do anything which would disgrace or discredit him in
      it; and he is obliged to a very strict observation of that species of
      morals, whether liberal or austere, which the general consent of this
      society prescribes to persons of his rank and fortune. A man of low
      condition, on the contrary, is far from being a distinguished member of
      any great society. While he remains in a country village, his conduct may
      be attended to, and he may be obliged to attend to it himself. In this
      situation, and in this situation only, he may have what is called a
      character to lose. But as soon as he comes into a great city, he is sunk
      in obscurity and darkness. His conduct is observed and attended to by
      nobody; and he is, therefore, very likely to neglect it himself, and to
      abandon himself to every sort of low profligacy and vice. He never emerges
      so effectually from this obscurity, his conduct never excites so much the
      attention of any respectable society, as by his becoming the member of a
      small religious sect. He from that moment acquires a degree of
      consideration which he never had before. All his brother sectaries are,
      for the credit of the sect, interested to observe his conduct; and, if he
      gives occasion to any scandal, if he deviates very much from those austere
      morals which they almost always require of one another, to punish him by
      what is always a very severe punishment, even where no evil effects attend
      it, expulsion or excommunication from the sect. In little religious sects,
      accordingly, the morals of the common people have been almost always
      remarkably regular and orderly; generally much more so than in the
      established church. The morals of those little sects, indeed, have
      frequently been rather disagreeably rigorous and unsocial.

      There are two very easy and effectual remedies, however, by whose joint
      operation the state might, without violence, correct whatever was unsocial
      or disagreeably rigorous in the morals of all the little sects into which
      the country was divided.

      The first of those remedies is the study of science and philosophy, which
      the state might render almost universal among all people of middling or
      more than middling rank and fortune; not by giving salaries to teachers in
      order to make them negligent and idle, but by instituting some sort of
      probation, even in the higher and more difficult sciences, to be undergone
      by every person before he was permitted to exercise any liberal
      profession, or before he could be received as a candidate for any
      honourable office, of trust or profit. If the state imposed upon this
      order of men the necessity of learning, it would have no occasion to give
      itself any trouble about providing them with proper teachers. They would
      soon find better teachers for themselves, than any whom the state could
      provide for them. Science is the great antidote to the poison of
      enthusiasm and superstition; and where all the superior ranks of people
      were secured from it, the inferior ranks could not be much exposed to it.

      The second of those remedies is the frequency and gaiety of public
      diversions. The state, by encouraging, that is, by giving entire liberty
      to all those who, from their own interest, would attempt, without scandal
      or indecency, to amuse and divert the people by painting, poetry, music,
      dancing; by all sorts of dramatic representations and exhibitions; would
      easily dissipate, in the greater part of them, that melancholy and gloomy
      humour which is almost always the nurse of popular superstition and
      enthusiasm. Public diversions have always been the objects of dread and
      hatred to all the fanatical promoters of those popular frenzies. The
      gaiety and good humour which those diversions inspire, were altogether
      inconsistent with that temper of mind which was fittest for their purpose,
      or which they could best work upon. Dramatic representations, besides,
      frequently exposing their artifices to public ridicule, and sometimes even
      to public execration, were, upon that account, more than all other
      diversions, the objects of their peculiar abhorrence.

      In a country where the law favoured the teachers of no one religion more
      than those of another, it would not be necessary that any of them should
      have any particular or immediate dependency upon the sovereign or
      executive power; or that he should have anything to do either in
      appointing or in dismissing them from their offices. In such a situation,
      he would have no occasion to give himself any concern about them, further
      than to keep the peace among them, in the same manner as among the rest of
      his subjects, that is, to hinder them from persecuting, abusing, or
      oppressing one another. But it is quite otherwise in countries where there
      is an established or governing religion. The sovereign can in this case
      never be secure, unless he has the means of influencing in a considerable
      degree the greater part of the teachers of that religion.

      The clergy of every established church constitute a great incorporation.
      They can act in concert, and pursue their interest upon one plan, and with
      one spirit as much as if they were under the direction of one man; and
      they are frequently, too, under such direction. Their interest as an
      incorporated body is never the same with that of the sovereign, and is
      sometimes directly opposite to it. Their great interest is to maintain
      their authority with the people, and this authority depends upon the
      supposed certainty and importance of the whole doctrine which they
      inculcate, and upon the supposed necessity of adopting every part of it
      with the most implicit faith, in order to avoid eternal misery. Should the
      sovereign have the imprudence to appear either to deride, or doubt himself
      of the most trifling part of their doctrine, or from humanity, attempt to
      protect those who did either the one or the other, the punctilious honour
      of a clergy, who have no sort of dependency upon him, is immediately
      provoked to proscribe him as a profane person, and to employ all the
      terrors of religion, in order to oblige the people to transfer their
      allegiance to some more orthodox and obedient prince. Should he oppose any
      of their pretensions or usurpations, the danger is equally great. The
      princes who have dared in this manner to rebel against the church, over
      and above this crime of rebellion, have generally been charged, too, with
      the additional crime of heresy, notwithstanding their solemn protestations
      of their faith, and humble submission to every tenet which she thought
      proper to prescribe to them. But the authority of religion is superior to
      every other authority. The fears which it suggests conquer all other
      fears. When the authorized teachers of religion propagate through the
      great body of the people, doctrines subversive of the authority of the
      sovereign, it is by violence only, or by the force of a standing army,
      that he can maintain his authority. Even a standing army cannot in this
      case give him any lasting security; because if the soldiers are not
      foreigners, which can seldom be the case, but drawn from the great body of
      the people, which must almost always be the case, they are likely to be
      soon corrupted by those very doctrines. The revolutions which the
      turbulence of the Greek clergy was continually occasioning at
      Constantinople, as long as the eastern empire subsisted; the convulsions
      which, during the course of several centuries, the turbulence of the Roman
      clergy was continually occasioning in every part of Europe, sufficiently
      demonstrate how precarious and insecure must always be the situation of
      the sovereign, who has no proper means of influencing the clergy of the
      established and governing religion of his country.

      Articles of faith, as well as all other spiritual matters, it is evident
      enough, are not within the proper department of a temporal sovereign, who,
      though he may be very well qualified for protecting, is seldom supposed to
      be so for instructing the people. With regard to such matters, therefore,
      his authority can seldom be sufficient to counterbalance the united
      authority of the clergy of the established church. The public
      tranquillity, however, and his own security, may frequently depend upon
      the doctrines which they may think proper to propagate concerning such
      matters. As he can seldom directly oppose their decision, therefore, with
      proper weight and authority, it is necessary that he should be able to
      influence it; and he can influence it only by the fears and expectations
      which he may excite in the greater part of the individuals of the order.
      Those fears and expectations may consist in the fear of deprivation or
      other punishment, and in the expectation of further preferment.

      In all Christian churches, the benefices of the clergy are a sort of
      freeholds, which they enjoy, not during pleasure, but during life or good
      behaviour. If they held them by a more precarious tenure, and were liable
      to be turned out upon every slight disobligation either of the sovereign
      or of his ministers, it would perhaps be impossible for them to maintain
      their authority with the people, who would then consider them as mercenary
      dependents upon the court, in the sincerity of whose instructions they
      could no longer have any confidence. But should the sovereign attempt
      irregularly, and by violence, to deprive any number of clergymen of their
      freeholds, on account, perhaps, of their having propagated, with more than
      ordinary zeal, some factious or seditious doctrine, he would only render,
      by such persecution, both them and their doctrine ten times more popular,
      and therefore ten times more troublesome and dangerous, than they had been
      before. Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of govermnent,
      and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who
      have the smallest pretensions to independency. To attempt to terrify them,
      serves only to irritate their bad humour, and to confirm them in an
      opposition, which more gentle usage, perhaps, might easily induce them
      either to soften, or to lay aside altogether. The violence which the
      French government usually employed in order to oblige all their
      parliaments, or sovereign courts of justice, to enregister any unpopular
      edict, very seldom succeeded. The means commonly employed, however, the
      imprisonment of all the refractory members, one would think, were forcible
      enough. The princes of the house of Stuart sometimes employed the like
      means in order to influence some of the members of the parliament of
      England, and they generally found them equally intractable. The parliament
      of England is now managed in another manner; and a very small experiment,
      which the duke of Choiseul made, about twelve years ago, upon the
      parliament of Paris, demonstrated sufficiently that all the parliaments of
      France might have been managed still more easily in the same manner. That
      experiment was not pursued. For though management and persuasion are
      always the easiest and safest instruments of government as force and
      violence are the worst and the most dangerous; yet such, it seems, is the
      natural insolence of man, that he almost always disdains to use the good
      instrument, except when he cannot or dare not use the bad one. The French
      government could and durst use force, and therefore disdained to use
      management and persuasion. But there is no order of men, it appears I
      believe, from the experience of all ages, upon whom it is so dangerous or
      rather so perfectly ruinous, to employ force and violence, as upon the
      respected clergy of an established church. The rights, the privileges, the
      personal liberty of every individual ecclesiastic, who is upon good terms
      with his own order, are, even in the most despotic governments, more
      respected than those of any other person of nearly equal rank and fortune.
      It is so in every gradation of despotism, from that of the gentle and mild
      government of Paris, to that of the violent and furious government of
      Constantinople. But though this order of men can scarce ever be forced,
      they may be managed as easily as any other; and the security of the
      sovereign, as well as the public tranquillity, seems to depend very much
      upon the means which he has of managing them; and those means seem to
      consist altogether in the preferment which he has to bestow upon them.

      In the ancient constitution of the Christian church, the bishop of each
      diocese was elected by the joint votes of the clergy and of the people of
      the episcopal city. The people did not long retain their right of
      election; and while they did retain it, they almost always acted under the
      influence of the clergy, who, in such spiritual matters, appeared to be
      their natural guides. The clergy, however, soon grew weary of the trouble
      of managing them, and found it easier to elect their own bishops
      themselves. The abbot, in the same manner, was elected by the monks of the
      monastery, at least in the greater part of abbacies. All the inferior
      ecclesiastical benefices comprehended within the diocese were collated by
      the bishop, who bestowed them upon such ecclesiastics as he thought
      proper. All church preferments were in this manner in the disposal of the
      church. The sovereign, though he might have some indirect influence in
      those elections, and though it was sometimes usual to ask both his consent
      to elect, and his approbation of the election, yet had no direct or
      sufficient means of managing the clergy. The ambition of every clergyman
      naturally led him to pay court, not so much to his sovereign as to his own
      order, from which only he could expect preferment.

      Through the greater part of Europe, the pope gradually drew to himself,
      first the collation of almost all bishoprics and abbacies, or of what were
      called consistorial benefices, and afterwards, by various machinations and
      pretences, of the greater part of inferior benefices comprehended within
      each diocese, little more being left to the bishop than what was barely
      necessary to give him a decent authority with his own clergy. By this
      arrangement the condition of the sovereign was still worse than it had
      been before. The clergy of all the different countries of Europe were thus
      formed into a sort of spiritual army, dispersed in different quarters
      indeed, but of which all the movements and operations could now be
      directed by one head, and conducted upon one uniform plan. The clergy of
      each particular country might be considered as a particular detachment of
      that army, of which the operations could easily be supported and seconded
      by all the other detachments quartered in the different countries round
      about. Each detachment was not only independent of the sovereign of the
      country in which it was quartered, and by which it was maintained, but
      dependent upon a foreign sovereign, who could at any time turn its arms
      against the sovereign of that particular country, and support them by the
      arms of all the other detachments.

      Those arms were the most formidable that can well be imagined. In the
      ancient state of Europe, before the establishment of arts and
      manufactures, the wealth of the clergy gave them the same sort of
      influence over the common people which that of the great barons gave them
      over their respective vassals, tenants, and retainers. In the great landed
      estates, which the mistaken piety both of princes and private persons had
      bestowed upon the church, jurisdictions were established, of the same kind
      with those of the great barons, and for the same reason. In those great
      landed estates, the clergy, or their bailiffs, could easily keep the
      peace, without the support or assistance either of the king or of any
      other person; and neither the king nor any other person could keep the
      peace there without the support and assistance of the clergy. The
      jurisdictions of the clergy, therefore, in their particular baronies or
      manors, were equally independent, and equally exclusive of the authority
      of the king’s courts, as those of the great temporal lords. The tenants of
      the clergy were, like those of the great barons, almost all tenants at
      will, entirely dependent upon their immediate lords, and, therefore,
      liable to be called out at pleasure, in order to fight in any quarrel in
      which the clergy might think proper to engage them. Over and above the
      rents of those estates, the clergy possessed in the tithes a very large
      portion of the rents of all the other estates in every kingdom of Europe.
      The revenues arising from both those species of rents were, the greater
      part of them, paid in kind, in corn, wine, cattle, poultry, etc. The
      quantity exceeded greatly what the clergy could themselves consume; and
      there were neither arts nor manufactures, for the produce of which they
      could exchange the surplus. The clergy could derive advantage from this
      immense surplus in no other way than by employing it, as the great barons
      employed the like surplus of their revenues, in the most profuse
      hospitality, and in the most extensive charity. Both the hospitality and
      the charity of the ancient clergy, accordingly, are said to have been very
      great. They not only maintained almost the whole poor of every kingdom,
      but many knights and gentlemen had frequently no other means of
      subsistence than by travelling about from monastery to monastery, under
      pretence of devotion, but in reality to enjoy the hospitality of the
      clergy. The retainers of some particular prelates were often as numerous
      as those of the greatest lay-lords; and the retainers of all the clergy
      taken together were, perhaps, more numerous than those of all the
      lay-lords. There was always much more union among the clergy than among
      the lay-lords. The former were under a regular discipline and
      subordination to the papal authority. The latter were under no regular
      discipline or subordination, but almost always equally jealous of one
      another, and of the king. Though the tenants and retainers of the clergy,
      therefore, had both together been less numerous than those of the great
      lay-lords, and their tenants were probably much less numerous, yet their
      union would have rendered them more formidable. The hospitality and
      charity of the clergy, too, not only gave them the command of a great
      temporal force, but increased very much the weight of their spiritual
      weapons. Those virtues procured them the highest respect and veneration
      among all the inferior ranks of people, of whom many were constantly, and
      almost all occasionally, fed by them. Everything belonging or related to
      so popular an order, its possessions, its privileges, its doctrines,
      necessarily appeared sacred in the eyes of the common people; and every
      violation of them, whether real or pretended, the highest act of
      sacrilegious wickedness and profaneness. In this state of things, if the
      sovereign frequently found it difficult to resist the confederacy of a few
      of the great nobility, we cannot wonder that he should find it still more
      so to resist the united force of the clergy of his own dominions,
      supported by that of the clergy of all the neighbouring dominions. In such
      circumstances, the wonder is, not that he was sometimes obliged to yield,
      but that he ever was able to resist.

      The privileges of the clergy in those ancient times (which to us, who live
      in the present times, appear the most absurd), their total exemption from
      the secular jurisdiction, for example, or what in England was called the
      benefit of clergy, were the natural, or rather the necessary, consequences
      of this state of things. How dangerous must it have been for the sovereign
      to attempt to punish a clergyman for any crime whatever, if his order were
      disposed to protect him, and to represent either the proof as insufficient
      for convicting so holy a man, or the punishment as too severe to be
      inflicted upon one whose person had been rendered sacred by religion? The
      sovereign could, in such circumstances, do no better than leave him to be
      tried by the ecclesiastical courts, who, for the honour of their own
      order, were interested to restrain, as much as possible, every member of
      it from committing enormous crimes, or even from giving occasion to such
      gross scandal as might disgust the minds of the people.

      In the state in which things were, through the greater part of Europe,
      during the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, and for
      some time both before and after that period, the constitution of the
      church of Rome may be considered as the most formidable combination that
      ever was formed against the authority and security of civil government, as
      well as against the liberty, reason, and happiness of mankind, which can
      flourish only where civil government is able to protect them. In that
      constitution, the grossest delusions of superstition were supported in
      such a manner by the private interests of so great a number of people, as
      put them out of all danger from any assault of human reason; because,
      though human reason might, perhaps, have been able to unveil, even to the
      eyes of the common people, some of the delusions of superstition, it could
      never have dissolved the ties of private interest. Had this constitution
      been attacked by no other enemies but the feeble efforts of human reason,
      it must have endured for ever. But that immense and well-built fabric,
      which all the wisdom and virtue of man could never have shaken, much less
      have overturned, was, by the natural course of things, first weakened, and
      afterwards in part destroyed; and is now likely, in the course of a few
      centuries more, perhaps, to crumble into ruins altogether.

      The gradual improvements of arts, manufactures, and commerce, the same
      causes which destroyed the power of the great barons, destroyed, in the
      same manner, through the greater part of Europe, the whole temporal
      manufactures, and commerce, the clergy, like the great barons, found
      something for which they could exchange their rude produce, and thereby
      discovered the means of spending their whole revenues upon their own
      persons, without giving any considerable share of them to other people.
      Their charity became gradually less extensive, their hospitality less
      liberal, or less profuse. Their retainers became consequently less
      numerous, and, by degrees, dwindled away altogether. The clergy, too, like
      the great barons, wished to get a better rent from their landed estates,
      in order to spend it, in the same manner, upon the gratification of their
      own private vanity and folly. But this increase of rent could be got only
      by granting leases to their tenants, who thereby became, in a great
      measure, independent of them. The ties of interest, which bound the
      inferior ranks of people to the clergy, were in this manner gradually
      broken and dissolved. They were even broken and dissolved sooner than
      those which bound the same ranks of people to the great barons; because
      the benefices of the church being, the greater part of them, much smaller
      than the estates of the great barons, the possessor of each benefice was
      much sooner able to spend the whole of its revenue upon his own person.
      During the greater part of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the
      power of the great barons was, through the greater part of Europe, in full
      vigour. But the temporal power of the clergy, the absolute command which
      they had once had over the great body of the people was very much decayed.
      The power of the church was, by that time, very nearly reduced, through
      the greater part of Europe, to what arose from their spiritual authority;
      and even that spiritual authority was much weakened, when it ceased to be
      supported by the charity and hospitality of the clergy. The inferior ranks
      of people no longer looked upon that order as they had done before; as the
      comforters of their distress, and the relievers of their indigence. On the
      contrary, they were provoked and disgusted by the vanity, luxury, and
      expense of the richer clergy, who appeared to spend upon their own
      pleasures what had always before been regarded as the patrimony of the
      poor.

      In this situation of things, the sovereigns in the different states of
      Europe endeavoured to recover the influence which they had once had in the
      disposal of the great benefices of the church; by procuring to the deans
      and chapters of each diocese the restoration of their ancient right of
      electing the bishop; and to the monks of each abbacy that of electing the
      abbot. The re-establishing this ancient order was the object of several
      statutes enacted in England during the course of the fourteenth century,
      particularly of what is called the statute of provisors; and of the
      pragmatic sanction, established in France in the fifteenth century. In
      order to render the election valid, it was necessary that the sovereign
      should both consent to it before hand, and afterwards approve of the
      person elected; and though the election was still supposed to be free, he
      had, however all the indirect means which his situation necessarily
      afforded him, of influencing the clergy in his own dominions. Other
      regulations, of a similar tendency, were established in other parts of
      Europe. But the power of the pope, in the collation of the great benefices
      of the church, seems, before the reformation, to have been nowhere so
      effectually and so universally restrained as in France and England. The
      concordat afterwards, in the sixteenth century, gave to the kings of
      France the absolute right of presenting to all the great, or what are
      called the consistorial, benefices of the Gallican church.

      Since the establishment of the pragmatic sanction and of the concordat,
      the clergy of France have in general shewn less respect to the decrees of
      the papal court, than the clergy of any other catholic country. In all the
      disputes which their sovereign has had with the pope, they have almost
      constantly taken part with the former. This independency of the clergy of
      France upon the court of Rome seems to be principally founded upon the
      pragmatic sanction and the concordat. In the earlier periods of the
      monarchy, the clergy of France appear to have been as much devoted to the
      pope as those of any other country. When Robert, the second prince of the
      Capetian race, was most unjustly excommunicated by the court of Rome, his
      own servants, it is said, threw the victuals which came from his table to
      the dogs, and refused to taste any thing themselves which had been
      polluted by the contact of a person in his situation. They were taught to
      do so, it may very safely be presumed, by the clergy of his own dominions.

      The claim of collating to the great benefices of the church, a claim in
      defence of which the court of Rome had frequently shaken, and sometimes
      overturned, the thrones of some of the greatest sovereigns in Christendom,
      was in this manner either restrained or modified, or given up altogether,
      in many different parts of Europe, even before the time of the
      reformation. As the clergy had now less influence over the people, so the
      state had more influence over the clergy. The clergy, therefore, had both
      less power, and less inclination, to disturb the state.

      The authority of the church of Rome was in this state of declension, when
      the disputes which gave birth to the reformation began in Germany, and
      soon spread themselves through every part of Europe. The new doctrines
      were everywhere received with a high degree of popular favour. They were
      propagated with all that enthusiastic zeal which commonly animates the
      spirit of party, when it attacks established authority. The teachers of
      those doctrines, though perhaps, in other respects, not more learned than
      many of the divines who defended the established church, seem in general
      to have been better acquainted with ecclesiastical history, and with the
      origin and progress of that system of opinions upon which the authority of
      the church was established; and they had thereby the advantage in almost
      every dispute. The austerity of their manners gave them authority with the
      common people, who contrasted the strict regularity of their conduct with
      the disorderly lives of the greater part of their own clergy. They
      possessed, too, in a much higher degree than their adversaries, all the
      arts of popularity and of gaining proselytes; arts which the lofty and
      dignified sons of the church had long neglected, as being to them in a
      great measure useless. The reason of the new doctrines recommended them to
      some, their novelty to many; the hatred and contempt of the established
      clergy to a still greater number: but the zealous, passionate, and
      fanatical, though frequently coarse and rustic eloquence, with which they
      were almost everywhere inculcated, recommended them to by far the greatest
      number.

      The success of the new doctrines was almost everywhere so great, that the
      princes, who at that time happened to be on bad terms with the court of
      Rome, were, by means of them, easily enabled, in their own dominions, to
      overturn the church, which having lost the respect and veneration of the
      inferior ranks of people, could make scarce any resistance. The court of
      Rome had disobliged some of the smaller princes in the northern parts of
      Germany, whom it had probably considered as too insignificant to be worth
      the managing. They universally, therefore, established the reformation in
      their own dominions. The tyranny of Christiern II., and of Troll
      archbishop of Upsal, enabled Gustavus Vasa to expel them both from Sweden.
      The pope favoured the tyrant and the archbishop, and Gustavus Vasa found
      no difficulty in establishing the reformation in Sweden. Christiern II.
      was afterwards deposed from the throne of Denmark, where his conduct had
      rendered him as odious as in Sweden. The pope, however, was still disposed
      to favour him; and Frederic of Holstein, who had mounted the throne in his
      stead, revenged himself, by following the example of Gustavus Vasa. The
      magistrates of Berne and Zurich, who had no particular quarrel with the
      pope, established with great ease the reformation in their respective
      cantons, where just before some of the clergy had, by an imposture
      somewhat grosser than ordinary, rendered the whole order both odious and
      contemptible.

      In this critical situation of its affairs the papal court was at
      sufficient pains to cultivate the friendship of the powerful sovereigns of
      France and Spain, of whom the latter was at that time emperor of Germany.
      With their assistance, it was enabled, though not without great
      difficulty, and much bloodshed, either to suppress altogether, or to
      obstruct very much, the progress of the reformation in their dominions. It
      was well enough inclined, too, to be complaisant to the king of England.
      But from the circumstances of the times, it could not be so without giving
      offence to a still greater sovereign, Charles V., king of Spain and
      emperor of Germany. Henry VIII., accordingly, though he did not embrace
      himself the greater part of the doctrines of the reformation, was yet
      enabled, by their general prevalence, to suppress all the monasteries, and
      to abolish the authority of the church of Rome in his dominions. That he
      should go so far, though he went no further, gave some satisfaction to the
      patrons of the reformation, who, having got possession of the government
      in the reign of his son and successor completed, without any difficulty,
      the work which Henry VIII. had begun.

      In some countries, as in Scotland, where the government was weak,
      unpopular, and not very firmly established, the reformation was strong
      enough to overturn, not only the church, but the state likewise, for
      attempting to support the church.

      Among the followers of the reformation, dispersed in all the different
      countries of Europe, there was no general tribunal, which, like that of
      the court of Rome, or an oecumenical council, could settle all disputes
      among them, and, with irresistible authority, prescribe to all of them the
      precise limits of orthodoxy. When the followers of the reformation in one
      country, therefore, happened to differ from their brethren in another, as
      they had no common judge to appeal to, the dispute could never be decided;
      and many such disputes arose among them. Those concerning the government
      of the church, and the right of conferring ecclesiastical benefices, were
      perhaps the most interesting to the peace and welfare of civil society.
      They gave birth, accordingly, to the two principal parties or sects among
      the followers of the reformation, the Lutheran and Calvinistic sects, the
      only sects among them, of which the doctrine and discipline have ever yet
      been established by law in any part of Europe.

      The followers of Luther, together with what is called the church of
      England, preserved more or less of the episcopal government, established
      subordination among the clergy, gave the sovereign the disposal of all the
      bishoprics, and other consistorial benefices within his dominions, and
      thereby rendered him the real head of the church; and without depriving
      the bishop of the right of collating to the smaller benefices within his
      diocese, they, even to those benefices, not only admitted, but favoured
      the right of presentation, both in the sovereign and in all other lay
      patrons. This system of church government was, from the beginning,
      favourable to peace and good order, and to submission to the civil
      sovereign. It has never, accordingly, been the occasion of any tumult or
      civil commotion in any country in which it has once been established. The
      church of England, in particular, has always valued herself, with great
      reason, upon the unexceptionable loyalty of her principles. Under such a
      government, the clergy naturally endeavour to recommend themselves to the
      sovereign, to the court, and to the nobility and gentry of the country, by
      whose influence they chiefly expect to obtain preferment. They pay court
      to those patrons, sometimes, no doubt, by the vilest flattery and
      assentation; but frequently, too, by cultivating all those arts which best
      deserve, and which are therefore most likely to gain them, the esteem of
      people of rank and fortune; by their knowledge in all the different
      branches of useful and ornamental learning, by the decent liberality of
      their manners, by the social good humour of their conversation, and by
      their avowed contempt of those absurd and hypocritical austerities which
      fanatics inculcate and pretend to practise, in order to draw upon
      themselves the veneration, and upon the greater part of men of rank and
      fortune, who avow that they do not practise them, the abhorrence of the
      common people. Such a clergy, however, while they pay their court in this
      manner to the higher ranks of life, are very apt to neglect altogether the
      means of maintaining their influence and authority with the lower. They
      are listened to, esteemed, and respected by their superiors; but before
      their inferiors they are frequently incapable of defending, effectually,
      and to the conviction of such hearers, their own sober and moderate
      doctrines, against the most ignorant enthusiast who chooses to attack
      them.

      The followers of Zuinglius, or more properly those of Calvin, on the
      contrary, bestowed upon the people of each parish, whenever the church
      became vacant, the right of electing their own pastor; and established, at
      the same time, the most perfect equality among the clergy. The former part
      of this institution, as long as it remained in vigour, seems to have been
      productive of nothing but disorder and confusion, and to have tended
      equally to corrupt the morals both of the clergy and of the people. The
      latter part seems never to have had any effects but what were perfectly
      agreeable.

      As long as the people of each parish preserved the right of electing their
      own pastors, they acted almost always under the influence of the clergy,
      and generally of the most factious and fanatical of the order. The clergy,
      in order to preserve their influence in those popular elections, became,
      or affected to become, many of them, fanatics themselves, encouraged
      fanaticism among the people, and gave the preference almost always to the
      most fanatical candidate. So small a matter as the appointment of a parish
      priest, occasioned almost always a violent contest, not only in one
      parish, but in all the neighbouring parishes who seldom failed to take
      part in the quarrel. When the parish happened to be situated in a great
      city, it divided all the inhabitants into two parties; and when that city
      happened, either to constitute itself a little republic, or to be the head
      and capital of a little republic, as in the case with many of the
      considerable cities in Switzerland and Holland, every paltry dispute of
      this kind, over and above exasperating the animosity of all their other
      factions, threatened to leave behind it, both a new schism in the church,
      and a new faction in the state. In those small republics, therefore, the
      magistrate very soon found it necessary, for the sake of preserving the
      public peace, to assume to himself the right of presenting to all vacant
      benefices. In Scotland, the most extensive country in which this
      presbyterian form of church government has ever been established, the
      rights of patronage were in effect abolished by the act which established
      presbytery in the beginning of the reign of William III. That act, at
      least, put in the power of certain classes of people in each parish to
      purchase, for a very small price, the right of electing their own pastor.
      The constitution which this act established, was allowed to subsist for
      about two-and-twenty years, but was abolished by the 10th of queen Anne,
      ch.12, on account of the confusions and disorders which this more popular
      mode of election had almost everywhere occasioned. In so extensive a
      country as Scotland, however, a tumult in a remote parish was not so
      likely to give disturbance to government as in a smaller state. The 10th
      of queen Anne restored the rights of patronage. But though, in Scotland,
      the law gives the benefice, without any exception to the person presented
      by the patron; yet the church requires sometimes (for she has not in this
      respect been very uniform in her decisions) a certain concurrence of the
      people, before she will confer upon the presentee what is called the cure
      of souls, or the ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the parish. She sometimes,
      at least, from an affected concern for the peace of the parish, delays the
      settlement till this concurrence can be procured. The private tampering of
      some of the neighbouring clergy, sometimes to procure, but more frequently
      to prevent this concurrence, and the popular arts which they cultivate, in
      order to enable them upon such occasions to tamper more effectually, are
      perhaps the causes which principally keep up whatever remains of the old
      fanatical spirit, either in the clergy or in the people of Scotland.

      The equality which the presbyterian form of church government establishes
      among the clergy, consists, first, in the equality of authority or
      ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and, secondly, in the equality of benefice.
      In all presbyterian churches, the equality of authority is perfect; that
      of benefice is not so. The difference, however, between one benefice and
      another, is seldom so considerable, as commonly to tempt the possessor
      even of the small one to pay court to his patron, by the vile arts of
      flattery and assentation, in order to get a better. In all the
      presbyterian churches, where the rights of patronage are thoroughly
      established, it is by nobler and better arts, that the established clergy
      in general endeavour to gain the favour of their superiors; by their
      learning, by the irreproachable regularity of their life, and by the
      faithful and diligent discharge of their duty. Their patrons even
      frequently complain of the independency of their spirit, which they are
      apt to construe into ingratitude for past favours, but which, at worse,
      perhaps, is seldom anymore than that indifference which naturally arises
      from the consciousness that no further favours of the kind are ever to be
      expected. There is scarce, perhaps, to be found anywhere in Europe, a more
      learned, decent, independent, and respectable set of men, than the greater
      part of the presbyterian clergy of Holland, Geneva, Switzerland, and
      Scotland.

      Where the church benefices are all nearly equal, none of them can be very
      great; and this mediocrity of benefice, though it may be, no doubt,
      carried too far, has, however, some very agreeable effects. Nothing but
      exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune. The vices of
      levity and vanity necessarily render him ridiculous, and are, besides,
      almost as ruinous to him as they are to the common people. In his own
      conduct, therefore, he is obliged to follow that system of morals which
      the common people respect the most. He gains their esteem and affection,
      by that plan of life which his own interest and situation would lead him
      to follow. The common people look upon him with that kindness with which
      we naturally regard one who approaches somewhat to our own condition, but
      who, we think, ought to be in a higher. Their kindness naturally provokes
      his kindness. He becomes careful to instruct them, and attentive to assist
      and relieve them. He does not even despise the prejudices of people who
      are disposed to be so favourable to him, and never treats them with those
      contemptuous and arrogant airs, which we so often meet with in the proud
      dignitaries of opulent and well endowed churches. The presbyterian clergy,
      accordingly, have more influence over the minds of the common people, than
      perhaps the clergy of any other established church. It is, accordingly, in
      presbyterian countries only, that we ever find the common people
      converted, without persecution completely, and almost to a man, to the
      established church.

      In countries where church benefices are, the greater part of them, very
      moderate, a chair in a university is generally a better establishment than
      a church benefice. The universities have, in this case, the picking and
      chusing of their members from all the churchmen of the country, who, in
      every country, constitute by far the most numerous class of men of
      letters. Where church benefices, on the contrary, are many of them very
      considerable, the church naturally draws from the universities the greater
      part of their eminent men of letters; who generally find some patron, who
      does himself honour by procuring them church preferment. In the former
      situation, we are likely to find the universities filled with the most
      eminent men of letters that are to be found in the country. In the latter,
      we are likely to find few eminent men among them, and those few among the
      youngest members of the society, who are likely, too, to be drained away
      from it, before they can have acquired experience and knowledge enough to
      be of much use to it. It is observed by Mr. de Voltaire, that father
      Porée, a jesuit of no great eminence in the republic of letters, was the
      only professor they had ever had in France, whose works were worth the
      reading. In a country which has produced so many eminent men of letters,
      it must appear somewhat singular, that scarce one of them should have been
      a professor in a university. The famous Cassendi was, in the beginning of
      his life, a professor in the university of Aix. Upon the first dawning of
      his genius, it was represented to him, that by going into the church he
      could easily find a much more quiet and comfortable subsistence, as well
      as a better situation for pursuing his studies; and he immediately
      followed the advice. The observation of Mr. de Voltaire may be applied, I
      believe, not only to France, but to all other Roman Catholic countries. We
      very rarely find in any of them an eminent man of letters, who is a
      professor in a university, except, perhaps, in the professions of law and
      physic; professions from which the church is not so likely to draw them.
      After the church of Rome, that of England is by far the richest and best
      endowed church in Christendom. In England, accordingly, the church is
      continually draining the universities of all their best and ablest
      members; and an old college tutor who is known and distinguished in Europe
      as an eminent man of letters, is as rarely to be found there as in any
      Roman catholic country, In Geneva, on the contrary, in the protestant
      cantons of Switzerland, in the protestant countries of Germany, in
      Holland, in Scotland, in Sweden, and Denmark, the most eminent men of
      letters whom those countries have produced, have, not all indeed, but the
      far greater part of them, been professors in universities. In those
      countries, the universities are continually draining the church of all its
      most eminent men of letters.

      It may, perhaps, be worth while to remark, that, if we except the poets, a
      few orators, and a few historians, the far greater part of the other
      eminent men of letters, both of Greece and Rome, appear to have been
      either public or private teachers; generally either of philosophy or of
      rhetoric. This remark will be found to hold true, from the days of Lysias
      and Isocrates, of Plato and Aristotle, down to those of Plutarch and
      Epictetus, Suetonius, and Quintilian. To impose upon any man the necessity
      of teaching, year after year, in any particular branch of science seems in
      reality to be the most effectual method for rendering him completely
      master of it himself. By being obliged to go every year over the same
      ground, if he is good for any thing, he necessarily becomes, in a few
      years, well acquainted with every part of it, and if, upon any particular
      point, he should form too hasty an opinion one year, when he comes, in the
      course of his lectures to reconsider the same subject the year thereafter,
      he is very likely to correct it. As to be a teacher of science is
      certainly the natural employment of a mere man of letters; so is it
      likewise, perhaps, the education which is most likely to render him a man
      of solid learning and knowledge. The mediocrity of church benefices
      naturally tends to draw the greater part of men of letters in the country
      where it takes place, to the employment in which they can be the most
      useful to the public, and at the same time to give them the best
      education, perhaps, they are capable of receiving. It tends to render
      their learning both as solid as possible, and as useful as possible.

      The revenue of every established church, such parts of it excepted as may
      arise from particular lands or manors, is a branch, it ought to be
      observed, of the general revenue of the state, which is thus diverted to a
      purpose very different from the defence of the state. The tithe, for
      example, is a real land tax, which puts it out of the power of the
      proprietors of land to contribute so largely towards the defence of the
      state as they otherwise might be able to do. The rent of land, however,
      is, according to some, the sole fund; and, according to others, the
      principal fund, from which, in all great monarchies, the exigencies of the
      state must be ultimately supplied. The more of this fund that is given to
      the church, the less, it is evident, can be spared to the state. It may be
      laid down as a certain maxim, that all other things being supposed equal,
      the richer the church, the poorer must necessarily be, either the
      sovereign on the one hand, or the people on the other; and, in all cases,
      the less able must the state be to defend itself. In several protestant
      countries, particularly in all the protestant cantons of Switzerland, the
      revenue which anciently belonged to the Roman catholic church, the tithes
      and church lands, has been found a fund sufficient, not only to afford
      competent salaries to the established clergy, but to defray, with little
      or no addition, all the other expenses of the state. The magistrates of
      the powerful canton of Berne, in particular, have accumulated, out of the
      savings from this fund, a very large sum, supposed to amount to several
      millions; part of which is deposited in a public treasure, and part is
      placed at interest in what are called the public funds of the different
      indebted nations of Europe; chiefly in those of France and Great Britain.
      What may be the amount of the whole expense which the church, either of
      Berne, or of any other protestant canton, costs the state, I do not
      pretend to know. By a very exact account it appears, that, in 1755, the
      whole revenue of the clergy of the church of Scotland, including their
      glebe or church lands, and the rent of their manses or dwelling-houses,
      estimated according to a reasonable valuation, amounted only to
      £68,514:1:5 1/12d. This very moderate revenue affords a decent subsistence
      to nine hundred and forty-four ministers. The whole expense of the church,
      including what is occasionally laid out for the building and reparation of
      churches, and of the manses of ministers, cannot well be supposed to
      exceed eighty or eighty-five thousand pounds a-year. The most opulent
      church in Christendom does not maintain better the uniformity of faith,
      the fervour of devotion, the spirit of order, regularity, and austere
      morals, in the great body of the people, than this very poorly endowed
      church of Scotland. All the good effects, both civil and religious, which
      an established church can be supposed to produce, are produced by it as
      completely as by any other. The greater part of the protestant churches of
      Switzerland, which, in general, are not better endowed than the church of
      Scotland, produce those effects in a still higher degree. In the greater
      part of the protestant cantons, there is not a single person to be found,
      who does not profess himself to be of the established church. If he
      professes himself to be of any other, indeed, the law obliges him to leave
      the canton. But so severe, or, rather, indeed, so oppressive a law, could
      never have been executed in such free countries, had not the diligence of
      the clergy beforehand converted to the established church the whole body
      of the people, with the exception of, perhaps, a few individuals only. In
      some parts of Switzerland, accordingly, where, from the accidental union
      of a protestant and Roman catholic country, the conversion has not been so
      complete, both religions are not only tolerated, but established by law.

      The proper performance of every service seems to require, that its pay or
      recompence should be, as exactly as possible, proportioned to the nature
      of the service. If any service is very much underpaid, it is very apt to