But there is another sentiment, not inconsistent with this, which
prompts us, on suitable occasions, to disinter the remains of great
men, and remove them to a more fitting and more honourable resting-
place. The Hotel des Invalides at Paris, and the Basilica of San
Lorenzo Fuori le Mura at Rome, {1b} are indebted to this sentiment
for the possession of relics which make those edifices the natural
resort of pilgrims as of sight-seers. It were a work of superfluity
to adduce further illustration of the position that the mere
exhumation and reinterment of a great man's remains, is commonly
held to be, in special cases, a justifiable proceeding, not a
violation of that honourable sentiment of humanity, which protects
and consecrates the depositaries of the dead. On a late occasion it
was not the belief that such a proceeding is a violation of our more
sacred instincts which hindered the removal to Pennsylvania of the
remains of William Penn; but simply the belief that they had already
a more suitable resting-place in his native land. {2}
There is still another sentiment, honourable in itself and not
inconsistent with those which I have specified, though still more
conditional upon the sufficiency of the reasons conducing to the
act: namely, the desire, by exhumation, to set at rest a reasonable
or important issue respecting the person of the deceased while he
was yet a living man.
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