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