Hannah More

“ Who, I say, that had a head to reason, or a heart to feel, did not glow with hope, that from the ruins of tyranny, and the rubbish of popery, a beautiful and finely framed edifice would in time have been constructed, and that ours would not have been the only country in which the patriot's fair idea of well understood liberty, and of the most pure and reasonable, as well as the most sublime and exalted Christianity might be realized?
But, alas! it frequently happens that the wise and good are not the most adventurous in attacking the mischiefs which they perceive and lament. ”

“ Far be it from me to wound, unnecessarily, the feelings of people whom I so sincerely esteem; but it is much to be suspected, that certain opinions in politics have a tendency to lead to certain opinions in religion. Where so much is at stake, they will do well to keep their consciences tender, in order to do which they should try to keep their discernment acute. They will do well to observe, that the same restless spirit of innovation is busily operating under various, though seemingly unconnected forms. ”

“ It cannot be denied, perhaps, that a reforming spirit was wanted in that country; their government was not more despotic, than their church was superstitious and corrupt.
But though this is readily granted, and though it may be unfair to blame those who in the first outset of the French Revolution, rejoiced even on religious motives; yet it is astonishing, how any pious person, even with all the blinding power of prejudice, can think without horror of the present state of France. It is no less wonderful how any rational man could, even in the beginning of the Revolution ”

“ Admire nature—cultivate reason. And you, Legislators, if you desire that the French people should be happy, make haste to propagate these principles, and to teach them in your primary schools, instead of those fanatical principles which have hitherto been taught. The tyranny of Kings was confined to make their people miserable in this life—but those other tyrants, the Priests, extend their dominion into another, of which they have no other idea than of eternal punishments; a doctrine which some men have hitherto had the good nature to believe. ”

“ Let us learn to fear the fleets and armies of the enemy, much less than those iniquities at home which this alarming dispensation may be intended to chastize.
The war which the French have declared against us, is of a kind altogether unexampled in every respect; insomuch that human wisdom is baffled when it would pretend to conjecture what may be the event. ”

“ It is in defence of our King, our Constitution, our Religion, our Laws, and consequently our Liberty, in the sound and rational sense of that term. It is to defend ourselves from the savage violence of a crusade, made against all Religion, as well as all Government. If ever therefore a war was undertaken on the ground of self-defence and necessity—if ever men might be literally [23] said to fight pro ARIS et focis, this seems to be the occasion.
The ambition of conquerors has been the source of great and extensive evils: Religious fanaticism of still greater. ”

“ But to conjure up fancied evils, or even greatly to aggravate real ones, and then to exhaust our labour in combating them, is the characteristic of a distempered imagination and an ungoverned spirit.
Romantic crusades, the ordeal trial, drowning of witches, the torture, and the Inquisition, have been justly reprobated as the foulest stain of the respective periods, in which, to the disgrace of human reason, they existed; but would any man be rationally employed, who should now stand up gravely to declaim against these as the predominating mischiefs of the present century? ”

“ But this at least we may safely say, that it is not so much the force of French bayonets, as the contamination of French principles, that ought to excite our apprehensions. We trust, that through the blessing of God we shall be defended from their open hostilities, by the temperate wisdom of our Rulers, and the bravery of our fleets and armies; but the domestic danger arising from licentious and irreligious principles among ourselves, can only be guarded against by the personal care and vigilance of every one of us who values religion and the good order of society. ”

“ There are doubtless in that unhappy country multitudes of virtuous and reasonable men, who rather silently acquiesce in the authority of their present turbulent government, than embrace its principles or [19] promote its projects from the sober conviction of their own judgment. These, together with those conscientious exiles whom this nation so honourably protects, may yet live to rejoice in the restoration of true liberty and solid peace to their native country, when light and order shall spring from the present darkness and confusion, and the reign of chaos shall be no more. ”

“ But this ignis fatuus of liberty and universal brotherhood, which the French are madly pursuing, with the insignia of freedom in one hand, and the bloody bayonet in the other, has bewitched your senses, and is in danger of misleading your steps. You are gazing at a meteor raised by the vapours of vanity, which these wild and infatuated wanderers are pursuing to their destruction ”

“ In other respects, it is but justice to the French Convention to confess, that they are hitherto without rivals and without imitators; for who can aspire to emulate that compound of anarchy and atheism which in their debates is mixed up with the pedantry of school boys, the jargon of a cabal, and the vulgarity and ill-breeding of a mob? ”

“ Must a revolution be equally necessary in the case of two sorts of Government, and two sorts of Religion, which are the very reverse of each other? opposite in their genius, unlike in their fundamental principles, and widely different in each of their component parts.
That despotism, priestcraft, intolerance, and superstition, are terrible evils, no candid Christian it is presumed will deny; but, blessed be God, though these mischiefs are not yet entirely banished from the face of the earth, they have scarcely any existence in this country. ”

“ Their conduct has awfully illustrated a position, which is not the less sound for having been often controverted, That no degree of wit and learning; no progress in commerce; no advances in the knowledge of nature, or in the embellishments of art, can ever thoroughly tame that savage, the natural human heart, without RELIGION. The arts of social life may give a sweetness to the manners and language, and induce, in some degree, a love of justice, truth, and humanity ”

“ Give them not finally over to their own corrupt imaginations, to their own heart's lusts. But after having made them a fearful example to all the nations of the earth, what a people can do, who have cast off the fear of THEE, do THOU graciously bring them back to a sense of that law which they have violated, and to participation of that mercy which they have abused; so that they may happily find, while the discovery can be attended with consolation, that doubtless there is a reward for the righteous; verify, there is a God who judgeth the earth. ”

“ It shall only be to remark, that all the boasted conquests of our Edwards and our Henrys over the French nation, do not confer such substantial glory on our own country, as she derives from having received, protected, and supported, among multitudes of other sufferers, at a time and under circumstances so peculiarly disadvantageous to herself, three thousand priests, of a nation habitually her enemy, and of a religion intolerant and hostile to her own. ”

“ If it shall please the Almighty in his anger to let loose this infatuated people, as a scourge for the iniquities of the human race; if they are delegated by infinite justice to act, as storm and tempest fulfilling his word ”

“ The poets of that country, whose style, sentiments, manners, and religion the French so affectedly labour to imitate, have left keen and biting satires on the Roman vices. Against the late proceedings in France, no satirist need employ his pen; that of the historian will be quite sufficient. Fact will put fable out of countenance; and the crimes which are usually held up to our abhorrence in works of invention, will be regarded as flat and feeble by those who shall peruse the records of the tenth of August, of the second and third of September, and of the twenty first of January. ”

“ So predominating is the power of an example we have once admired, and set up as a standard of imitation, and so fascinating has been the ascendency of the Convention over the minds of those whose approbation of French politics commenced in the earlier periods of the Revolution, that it extends to the most trivial circumstances. ”

“ To observe, that the same impatience of restraint, the same contempt of order, peace, and subordination, which makes men bad citizens, makes them bad Christians; and that to this secret, but almost infallible connexion between religious and political sentiment, does France owe her present unparalleled anarchy and impiety. ”

“ Even moderate circumstances need not plead an exemption. The industrious tradesman will not, even in a political view, be eventually a loser by his small contribution. The money raised is neither carried out of our country, nor dissipated in luxuries, but returns again to the community; to our shops and to our markets, to procure the bare necessaries of life.
Some have objected to the difference of religion of those for whom we solicit. ”

“ In a distress so wide and comprehensive, many are prevented from giving by that common excuse—"That it is but a drop of water in the ocean." But let them reflect, that if all the individual drops were withheld, there would be no ocean at all; and the inability to give much ought not, on any occasion, to be converted into an excuse for giving nothing. ”

“ Let her who indulges such habits, and pleads such excuses in consequence, reflect, that by retrenching one costly dish from her abundant table, the superfluities of one expensive desert, one evening's public amusement, she may furnish at least a week's subsistence to more than one person, [A] as liberally bred perhaps as herself, and who, in his own country, may have often tasted how much more blessed it is to give than to receive—to a minister of God, who has been long accustomed to bestow the necessaries he is now reduced to solicit. ”

“ We must repair these losses.—Let me then represent to you the times, that are fast approaching, when our philosophers, whose names are celebrated throughout Europe, Petion, Syeyes, Condorcet, and others—surrounded in our Pantheon, as the Greek philosophers where at Athens, with a crowd of disciples coming from all parts of Europe, walking like the Peripatetics, and teaching—this man, the system of the universe, and developing the progress of all human knowledge ”

“ Even your young daughters, whom maternal prudence has not yet furnished with the means of bestowing, may be cheaply taught the first rudiments of charity, together with an important lesson of economy: They may be taught to sacrifice a feather, a set of ribbons, an expensive ornament, an idle diversion. ”

“ God grant that those who go forth to fight our battles, instead of being intimidated by the number of their enemies, may bear in mind, that "there is no restraint with God to save by many or by few." And let the meanest of us who remains at home remember also, that even he may contribute to the internal safety of his country, by the integrity of his private life, and to the success of her defenders, by following them with his fervent prayers. ”

“ It is surely to be charged to the inadequate and wretched hands into which the work of reformation fell, and not to the impossibility of amending the civil and religious institutions of France, that all has succeeded so ill. ”

“ With a timidity in some respects virtuous, they fear attempting any thing which may possible aggravate the evils they deplore, or put to hazard the blessings they already enjoy. They dread plucking up the wheat with the tares, and are rather apt, with a spirit of hopeless resignation,
"To bear the ills they have,
"Than fly to others that they know not of." ”

“ But little as I am disposed to become the apologist of either the one principle or the other, there is no extravagance in asserting, that they have seemed incapable of producing, even in ages, that extent of mischief, that comprehensive desolation, which philosophy, falsely so called, has produced in three years. ”

“ Surely if the superstitious Tartar hopes to become possessed of the courage and talents of the enemy he slays, the Christian is not afraid of catching, or of propagating the error of the sufferer he relieves.—Christian charity is of no party. We plead not for their faith, but for their wants. And let the more scrupulous, who look for desert as well as [6] distress in the objects of their bounty, bear in mind, that if these men could have sacrificed their conscience to their convenience, they had not now been in this country. ”

“ You, who fare sumptuously every day, and yet complain you have little to bestow, let not this bounty be subtracted from another bounty, but rather from some superfluous expense.
The beneficent and right minded want no arguments to be pressed upon them; but I write to those of every description. Luxurious habits of living, which really furnish the distressed with the fairest grounds for application, are too often urged as a motive for withholding assistance, and produced as a plea for having little to spare. ”

“ Christians! it is not a small thing—it is your life. The pestilence of irreligion which you detest, will insinuate itself imperceptibly with those manners, phrases, and principles which you admire and adopt. ”

“ They say little of those real and pressing evils resulting from our own corruption, which constitute the actual miseries of life; while they gloomily speculate upon a thousand imaginary political grievances, and fancy that the reformation of our rulers and our legislators is all that is wanting to make us a happy people.
The principles of just and equitable government were, perhaps, never more fully established, nor public justice more exactly administered. Pure and un [17] defiled religion was never laid more open to all, than at this day. I wish I could say we were a religious people ”