After destroying all other genealogies and family
distinctions, they invent a sort of pedigree of crimes. It is not very
just to chastise men for the offences of their natural ancestors; but to
take the fiction of ancestry in a corporate succession, as a ground for
punishing men who have no relation to guilty acts, except in names and
general descriptions, is a sort of refinement in injustice belonging to
the philosophy of this enlightened age. The Assembly punishes men, many,
if not most, of whom abhor the violent conduct of ecclesiastics in
former times as much as their present persecutors can do, and who would
be as loud and as strong in the expression of that sense, if they were
not well aware of the purposes for which all this declamation is
employed.
Corporate bodies are immortal for the good of the members, but not for
their punishment. Nations themselves are such corporations. As well
might we in England think of waging inexpiable war upon all Frenchmen
for the evils which they have brought upon us in the several periods of
our mutual hostilities. You might, on your part, think yourselves
justified in falling upon all Englishmen on account of the unparalleled
calamities brought upon the people of France by the unjust invasions of
our Henrys and our Edwards. Indeed, we should be mutually justified in
this exterminatory war upon each other, full as much as you are in the
unprovoked persecution of your present countrymen, on account of the
conduct of men of the same name in other times.
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