THE NATURE AND CAUSES OE

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The privileges of the clergy in those ancient times (whichto us who live in the present times appear the most absurd),their total exemption from the secular jurisdiction, for exam-ple, or what in England was called the benefit of clergy,were the natural or rather the necessary consequences of thisstate of things. How dangerous must it have been for thesovereign to attempt to punish a clergyman for any crimewhatever, if his order were disposed to protect him, and torepresent either the proof as insufficient for convicting soholy a man, or the punishment as too severe to be inflictedupon one whose person had been rendered sacred by reli-gion ? The sovereign could, in such circumstances, do nobetter than leave him to be tried by the ecclesiastical courts,who, for the honour of their own order, were interested torestrain, as much as possible, every member of it from com-mitting enormous crimes, or even from giving occasion tosuch gross scandal as might disgust the minds of the people.

In the state in which things were through the greater partof Europe during the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenthcenturies, and for some time both before and after that period,the constitution of the church of Rome may be consideredas the most formidable combination that ever was formedagainst the authority and security of civil government, aswell as against the liberty, reason, and happiness of man-kind, which can flourish only where civil government is ableto protect them. In that constitution the grossest delusionsof superstition were supported in such a manner by the pri-vate interests of so great a number of people as put them outof all danger from any assault of human reason ; becausethough human reason might perhaps have been able to un-veil, even to the eyes of the common people, some of the de-lusions of superstition, it could never have dissolved the tiesof private interest. Had this constitution been attacked byno other enemies but the feeble efforts of human reason, itnnist have endured for ever. Hut that immense and well-built fabric, which all the wisdom and virtue of man couldnever have shaken, much less have overturned, was by thenatural course of things, first weakened, and afterward inpart destroyed, and is now likely, in the course of a few cen-turies more, perhaps, to crumble into ruins altogether.

The gradual improvements of arts, manufactures, andcommerce, the same causes which destroyed the power of thegreat barons, destroyed, in the same manner, through the