THAT the French were an amiable people the whole civilized world has given abundant testimony, by endeavouring to imitate them. There was not a nation in Europe but had, in some degree, adopt­ed their language and their fashions; and all those individuals, belonging even to their haughty rival enemy, who travelled in their country, were led by an involun­tary impulse into an imitation of their manners.

The prominent feature in their national character was, it is true, levity; but, though levity and ferociousness may, and often do, meet in the same person, no writer, that I recollect, had ever accused the French of being cruel. If we are to judge of their [Page 141] disposition by their national sports and en­tertainments, we shall find no room to draw a conclusion against their humanity. These cruel diversions, where men become the bullies of brute creatures, and laugh at see­ing them goad, and bite, and tear each other to pieces, were never known in France. Even in their theatrical performances a dead body was never exhibited on the scene: such a spectacle was thought to be too much for the feelings of the audience. The works of their favourite authors generally breathe the greatest tenderness and humanity. The nation that could produce, and admire, a Marmontel and a Racine, could not be na­turally bloody-minded.

These verses, extracted from the most elegant of poems, dictated by the bests of hearts, contain the justest character of the French nation, that I have ever yet seen. To this character I am ready to subscribe: for, I too have been charmed with their gentle manners and their social ease: I too have felt the power of those arts which endear mind to mind: I have been a witness of their urbanity, their respectful deference and attention to the softer sex, their paternal tenderness, and their veneration for old age.

Whence, then, the mighty, the dread­ful change? What is it that has transformed a great portion of this airy humane people into a horde of sullen assassins? What is it that has converted these thought­less realms; this gay sprightly land of mirth, this bright domain, into a gloomy wilder­ness watered with rivers of human blood? This ought to be the great object of our en­quiries: [Page 143] this ought to fix all our attention. Without determining this point, we can draw no profit from the preceding relation, and, without attempting it, I should have undertaken the unpleasant task of holding the French people up to reproach and de­testation to no manner of purpose.

It has been asserted, again and again, by the partizans of the French revolution, that all the crimes which have disgraced it, are to be ascribed to the hostile operations of their enemies. They have told us, that, had not the Austrians and Prussians been on their march to Paris, the prisoners would not have been massacred, on the 2nd and 3rd of September, 1792. But, can we possibly conceive how the murder of 8,000 poor prisoners, locked up and bound, could be necessary to the defence of a Capital, containing a million of inhabitants? Can we believe that the sabres of the assassins would not have been more effectually em­ployed against the invaders, than against de­fenceless priests and women. The deluded populace were told not ‘to leave the wol­ves in the fold while they went to at­tack those that were without.’ But these wolves, if they were such, were in prison; were under a guard an hundred thousand times as strong as themselves, and could have been destroyed at a moment's [Page 144] warning. There is something so abomina­bly cowardly in this justification, that it is even more base than the crime. Suppose that a hundred thousand men had marched from Paris, to make head against the Austrians and Prussians, there were yet nine hundred thousand left to guard the unhappy wretch­es that were tied hand and foot. Where could be the necessity of massacreing them! Where could be the necessity of hacking them to pieces, tearing out their bowels, and biting their hearts?

Subsequent events have fully proved, that it was not danger that produced these bloody measures: for, we have ever seen the revolutionists most cruel in times of their greatest security. Their butcheries at Lyons and in its neighbourhood did not be­gin, till they were completely triumphant. It was then, at the moment when they had no retaliation to fear, that they commenced their bloody work. Carrier, lolling at at his ease, sent the victims to death by hun­dreds. The blood never flowed from the guillotine in such torrents, as at the very time when their armies were driving their enemies before them in every direction.

Charles Fox (who, by the bye, would not have made a bad cut-throat general) Charles Fox had the folly and impudence to say, in the British House of Commons, [Page 145] that the massacres in France ought to be attributed to the Allied Powers. ‘You hunt them like wild beasts,’ said this hu­mane and honest swindler, ‘and then you complain of them for being ferocious.’ How this hunting, as Fox calls it, could drive the French to butcher one another, I cannot see; but if it was a justifiable reason for them, it might certainly be applied with much more justice to their enemies; for these have been oftener obliged to fly than the French. The revolutionary armies have overrun an extent of territory equal to one third of their own country: the Savoyards, the Germans, the Flemings, the Dutch, the Spaniards, and the English, have been obliged to fly before them; but we have heard of no massacres among these people. The French most unmercifully put to death eight thousand of their country people, who were in the prisons of Paris, and, as an ex­cuse for this, they tell us that the Duke of Brunswick had invaded the province of Champagne; but they themselves have overrun all the United Netherlands, and even taken possession of the capital; and we have not heard, that the Dutch have as yet been guilty of a single massacre. They have found but one place in all their ca­reer, where the people could be prevailed on to erect a guillotine, and that was at [Page 146] Geneva. Here their army was more nu­merous than the whole population of the state, and therefore their system was fully adopted; yet even here, among this little debased and tyranized people, there were to be found no villains infamous enough to imitate their masters in murdering women and children. That was a species of slaught­er reserved for the French nation alone.

The French revolution has been com­pared to that of America, and I have heard some men, calling themselves Americans, who have not been ashamed to say, that as great cruelties were committed in this coun­try as in that. I would now ask these men, who are so anxious to be thought as bloo­dy as the sans-culotte French, if they can give me one instance of the Americans mur­dering their towns-men at the approach of the enemy? When the British army suc­ceeded that of the Congress at Philadelphia, did the continental troops murder all the Tories, before they quitted the city? Can these generous friends of the French revo­lution tell us of any massacres that took place in this country? Did they ever hear of women and children being drowned and shot by hundreds? Seven years of civil war desolated these states; but the blood of one single woman or child never stained the earth.

[Page 147]If the doctrine of the prosligate Charles Fox be admitted, if a people be justifiable in entering on a series of massacres, the in­stant they are pressed by an enemy from without, what safety can there be for any of us? If a declaration of war is to unsheath the daggers of all the assassins in the com­munity, civil society is the greatest curse that ever fell upon mankind. Much better and safer were it for us to separate, and prowl about like savages, nay like beasts, than to live thus, in continual trepidation, in conti­nual fear for our throats.

There is something so exceedingly cow­ardly and ridiculous in this justification, that even the French revolutionists are ashamed of it. They have recourse to another still more dishonourable, it is true, but less cowardly. They tell us, that all the assassins in France have been in the pay of Great Britain; or, to make use of their own ex­pression, have been excited to action by the "gold of Pitt."

As I wish to advance nothing without the best possible authority, I shall here insert a passage on this subject, taken from a Gazet­te published at Philadelphia by one Gatreau, and at the press of Moreau de St. Mery, who was a member of the constituent assembly of France.

[Page 148]The intention of the piece evidently is to justify the French character, or rather the character of the French revolutionists, by attributing the horrid deeds these latter have committed, to some cause other than their own dispositions and anarchical principles. To avoid all cavil with respect to the authenticity of the extract, and the correctness of the translation, I will first give it in French, and then in English, ob­serving, for the further satisfaction of the reader, that he may find the piece entire in the Gazette above mentioned, of the fourth of February 1796.

‘Quel homme éclairé par l'expérience, nieroit aujhurd'hui, que, de la tête de Pitt font sortis tous les crimes qui fesoient abhorrer la Revolution par ceux-la meme qui en adornie [...] les principes; que, c'est au foyer de la jalousie et de la haine An­gloise, que [...]'allumèrent les torches, que se forgèrent les poignards, qui ont fait un monceau de cendres et de sang des plus belles possessions du monde?—Quel génie malfaisant créa les factions▪ impies, san­guinaires ou ambitienses, qui devoient anéantir la France, au du moins la re­placer sous le joug, si la providence ne deconcertoit pas toujours les complots de l'iniquité?—Le génie infernal du Ministre Anglois.—C'est avec l'or de fes victimes [Page 149] de l'Inde qu'il payoit le fang François, versé à grands flots à Paris, dans les de­partemens, aux frontières et dans les co­lonies.’

‘What man, enlightened by experience, will now deny, that, from the head of Pitt have come all the crimes which have rendered the Revolution detestable in the eyes of even those who adored its princi­ples; that, it was English jealousy and hatred that lighted the flames, and shar­pened the poignards, which have re­duced the finest possessions in the world to a heap of ashes and blood?—What evil genius created the impious, sangui­nary and ambitious factions, that were to annihilate France; or, at least, bend it again beneath the vol [...] Providence had not disconcerted [...] of iniqui­quity? —The infe [...] [...] of the Eng­lish minister. [...] with the gold, drawn from his victims in India, that he paid for the French blood, which has flowed in rivers at Paris, in the depart­ments, on the frontiers, and in the co­lonies.’

This is an important, and were it not so very hackneyed and thread-bare, I would call it a "precious confession." Here we see a Frenchman, a partizan of, and perhaps an actor in, the revolution, endeavouring [Page 150] to wipe away the stain on its principles, by ascribing all the horrors those principles have produced, to the gold distributed among the revolutionists by the English mi­nister. The cruelties that have been com­mitted, were not, then, necessary to the esta­blishment of a free government; they were not the effect of irritation, of anarchical con­fusion, of vindictive retaliation; they were not the natural consequence of a long-op­pressed people's breaking their chains and rising on their tyrants; all these excuses (which I must allow were silly enough) are at once done away by this new justification; for, we are here told, in so many words, that the French people have shed rivers of each other's blood, in every part of their dominions, p [...]ly for the love—not of li­berty, but of the gold of Pitt.

There is su [...]h a [...]tural connection be­tween the measures of the several National Assemblies and the massacres that were the immediate consequence of them, that it is im­possible to effect a separation without the utmost violence to all manner of reasoning and truth. If it was the gold of Pitt that paid for all the French blood that has been spilled, it must have been that gold that paid for the inhuman murder of Messrs. Launy and Flessel, and it must have been that gold which induced the constituent as­sembly [Page 151] to sanction the murder, by giving the assassins of these gentlemen the title of heroes and conquerors, and by instituting a national festival in their honour.

The Revolution was begun, and has hi­therto been maintained by the shedding of innocent blood; therefore, if it was the gold of Pitt that paid for that blood, it is to the gold of Pitt that the revolution is to be as­cribed, and not to that patriotic spirit and love of liberty, with which we have been so long amused. In the fifth chapter of this work, it is incontestibly proved, that the several National Assemblies authorised, or approved of all the massacres which have dis­graced their country; if, then, these mas­sacres were paid for by Mr. Pitt, must we not inevitably conclude that the National Assemblies were in the same pay? If Mr. Pitt paid for the blood of the family of Bourbon, for that of the king's guards, of the nobility, the clergy, the bankers, the merchants, in short, of all the rich or aristo­crats, as they are called, it was Mr. Pitt who destroyed the monarchy: it was he who caused France to be called a Republic, and who gave rise to the doctrine of equali­ty. Those, therefore, who talk of the gold of Pitt, must cease all their fulsome eu­logiums on these gallant republicans; for, [Page 152] if they are to have a republic, it will, ac­cording to their own confessions, be the work of the English minister.

This vindication, throwing the blame on the gold of Pitt, amply participates in the misfortune of all the vindications that have lately appeared amongst us; that is, it takes up a bad cause, and makes it worse. The reader will certainly feel, with me, an in­expressible indignation at a people, who, because an hostile army was on their fron­tiers, could be prevailed on to butcher thousands upon thousands of their innocent countrymen; who could cut the throats of their fathers and mothers, rip up the bowels of women with child, and carry about the trophies of their base and savage triumph on the points of their pikes and bayonets; but, what will be his feelings, what will contain his swelling heart, when he is told, that all this was undertaken and perpetrated for fo­reign gold? The revolutionists, by accusing Mr. Pitt of being at the bottom of their massacres, do not perceive, without doubt, that they are heaping ten times ten-fold in­famy on themselves and their nation.

By alledging this influence of British gold, the writer I have above quoted re­duces himself and the partizans of the re­volution to a most distressing dilemma. He owns that rivers of French blood have flow­ed [Page 153] at Paris, in the departments, on the frontiers, and in the colonies; and he tells us, that this blood was paid for with the gold of Pitt. Now, admitting this to be true, this blood has been shed, and this gold received, by Frenchmen. To what, then, will our author ascribe this sangui­nary avarice? He must either ascribe it to the natural disposition of his countrymen; or, a change in that natural disposition, produced by the revolution. It is uncertain which of these he may choose, but it is very certain, choose which he will, that he has held up the cha­racter of his nation, or the principles of the revolution to detestation, and abhorrence. This is the way he has justified the French in the eyes of the people of this country. Infinitely better were it for such justifiers to suffer the press to rest in eternal inaction. All that a good Frenchman can do, is, to weep over the disgrace of his country; for, so long as murder, horrid, barbarous, sa­vage murder, shall admit of no excuse, so long shall the actions of the French revo­lutionists remain unjustifiable.

It is more than probable, that a writer of this stamp might be willing to allow, that his countrymen were always naturally fero­cious and bloody-minded, rather than con­fess that this disposition has been produced by the principles of the revolution: for, [Page 154] patriots of this kind are ever ready to sacri­fice the honour of their country to the sup­port of their systems. But justice demands from us to reject with disdain every such conclusion. We have seen the French peo­ple sprightly, beneficent, humane and hap­py; let us, now, follow them step-by-step into the awful opposite, and see for our­selves, by what diabolical means the change has been effected.

The first National Assembly had hardly assumed that title, when they discovered an intention of overturning the government, which they had been called together, and which their constituents had enjoined them, to support, and of levelling all ranks and distinctions among the different orders in the community. To this they were not led, as it has been so falsely pretended, by their love of liberty and desire of seeing their country happy; but by envy, cursed envy, that will never let the fiery demagogue sleep in peace, while he sees a greater or richer than himself. It has been objected to this, that there were among the revolutionists men who already enjoyed distinguished ho­nours; but it is forgotten at the same time, that ambition will be at the top, or no where; that it will destroy itself with the envied object, rather than act a subaltern part. The motto of a demagogue is that [Page 155] of Milton's Satan: "rather reign in hell than serve in heaven."

This task of destruction was, however, an arduous one. To tear the complicated work of fourteen centuries to pieces at once, to render honours dishonourable, and turn reverential awe into contempt and mockery, was not to be accomplished but by extraor­dinary means. It was evident that proper­ty must change hands, that the best blood of the nation must flow in torrents, or the project must fail. The Assembly, to arm the multitude on their side, broached the popular doctrine of equality. It was a ne­cessary part of the plan of these reformers to seduce the people to their support; and such was the credulity of the unfortunate French, that they soon began to look on them as the oracles of virtue and wisdom, and believed themselves raised, by one short sentence issued by these ambitious impostors, from the state of subjects to that of sove­reigns.

‘I punished (says Solon, the Athenian law-giver) I punished with death, all those aspiring disturbers of the common­wealth, who, in order to domineer them­selves, and lead the vulgar in their train, pretended that all men were equal, and sought to confound the different ranks in society, by preaching up a chimerical [Page 156] equality, that never did or can exist.’ How happy would it have been for France, had there been some Solon, endued with wisdom and power enough to punish the political mountebanks of the Constituent Assembly! What dreadful carnage, what indelible disgrace, the nation would have escaped! Hardly had the word equality been pronounced, when the whole kingdom became a scene of anarchy and confusion. The name of liberty (I say the name, for the regenerated French have known nothing of it but the name) The name of liber [...] had already half turned the heads of th [...] people, and that of equality finished [...] work. From the moment it sounded in their ears, all that had formerly inspired r [...] spect, all that they had reverenced and ado­red even, began to excite contempt and fu­ry. Birth, beauty, old age, all became the victims of a destructive equality, erected in­to a law by an Assembly of ambitious ty­rants, who were ready to destroy every thing that crossed their way to absolute do­mination.

One of the immediate effects of the pro­mulgation of this doctrine was the murder of Monsieur Foulon and his son-in-law Ber­thier, who, without so much as being char­ged with any crime, were taken by the people, conducted to Paris and cruelly [Page 157] massacreed. I will say nothing (says Du Gour in his eloquent Memoire page 35) I will say nothing of the savage cruelties committed on Foulon and Berthier; I will not represent the bloody head of the father-in-law, offer­ed to the son to kiss, pressed against his lips, and afterwards put under his feet; I will not represent the inhuman assassins rushing on Berthier, tearing out his heart, and placing it, quivering and still palpita­ting, on the table of the town-hall, before the magistrates of the commune.—After this their heads were stuck on pikes, and the heart of Berthier on the point of a sword. In this manner they were carried through the streets, followed by the exulting popu­lace (see Rabaut's Hist. Of the French Revolution, page 117.) Nor let it be pretended that the Assembly could not pre­vent this shameful, this bloody deed. They had the absolute command of Paris at the time, and had two hundred thousand armed men ready to obey their nod. But the As­sembly never opposed the murder of those whom they looked upon as their enemies; nay, Rabaut, their partial historian (who was one of their body) even justifies the murder.

When the word equality found its way to the colonies it was only a signal for assassina­tion. At Port-au-Prince the Chevalier de [Page 158] Mauduit, a brave and generous officer, who rendered essential services to this country during the last war, was murdered by his own soldiers. The villains had the insolence to order him to kneel down before them: "No," said he, like a soldier as he was, ‘it shall never be said, that Thomas Mau­duit bent his knee before a set of scoun­drels,’ —His head was cut off; he was torn limb from limb; his bowels were trail­ed along the street, as butchers do those of beasts in a slaughter house. The next mor­ning the different members of his body, and morsels of his flesh, were seen strewed about opposite his house, and his bloody and ghastly head placed on the step of the door way.— We know, we have before our eyes the proofs of what havock, distress and destruc­tion, this detestable word has since produced in the unfortunate island of St. Domingo.

It was now that the sovereign people, enter­ing on their reign, first took the famous plundering motto: "La guerre aux cha­teaux et la paix aux chaumiéres"; that is, War to the gentlemen's houses and peace to the cottage; or, in other words, war to all those who have any thing to lose. This motto is extremely comprehensive; it includes the whole doctrine of equality. It was not a vain declaration in France; but was put in practice with that patriotic zeal which [Page 159] has marked the whole course of the revo­lution. To be rich or of a good family became a crime, which was often expiated by the loss of life. Men took as much pains to be thought obscure vagabonds, as they had formerly done to be thought wealthy and of honest descent; and, what distinguishes the French revolution from all others in the world, to have a ragged pair of breeches, or to be totally in want of that so necessary article of dress, was es­teemed the surest mark of pure patriotism, and was the greatest recommendation to public favour.

But the National Assembly, though hear­tily seconded by myriads of ragged popu­lace, knew, however, that they could not long depend upon such a promiscuous support. The citizens were, therefore, to be soldiers at the same time, and placed under the command of the creatures of the Assembly. To this end the territory of the nation un­derwent a new division, on the levelling plan. The provinces of France were melt­ed down into a rude undigested mass of de­partments, districts, and municipalities. All the old magistrates were replaced by the vilest wretches that could be found. There were forty four thousand municipalities, each of these had several municipal officers, [Page 160] and each of these latter his troop of revolu­tionary myrmidons. There could not be less than three millions of men in arms, rea­dy to burn, cut and slay at a moment's warning. Nothing was to be seen or heard but the patrolling of these sons of equality. The Assembly pretended to hold out the olive branch, while they were forming the nation into a camp. The peaceable man trembled for his life. One must have been an eye witness of the change produced by these measures, to have the least idea of it. All was suspicion and dread. The bell that had never rung but to call the peaceful vil­lagers to the altar, was converted into a signal of approaching danger, and the tree, beneath which they formerly danced, be­came an alarm post. The ragged greasy magistrates, with their municipal troops at their heels, were for ever prowling about for their prey, the property of others. These little platoons of cut-throats ranged the country round, crying havock burning and laying waste where ever they came. They had not yet begun to murder frequently, but it was little consequence to a man whe­ther his brains were blowed out or not, af­ter having seen himself and family reduced, in the space of a few hours, from affluence to b [...]ggary. A band of these enlightened [...] went to the chateau, or country [Page 161] house of a gentleman in Provence, and de­manded that his person should be delivered into their hands. The servants defended the house for some time, but in vain; they advanced to the front door, when the lady of the house appeared with a child in her arms, and endeavoured to pacify them, say­ing that her husband was gone out at the back door. The ruffians instantly set fire to the house. When the lady perceived this, she confessed that her husband was hid­den in one of the garrets. The house was now on fire; she left her child and rushed through the flames to call her husband from his retreat, but she was stifled in the passage, and burnt to death, and her husband shared in her fate, leaving a helpless infant to the mercy of the murderers of its father and mo­ther.—A hundred volumes like this could not contain the horrors that these revolu­tionary robbers committed in the name of liberty and equality.

Let this, Americans, be a lesson to you, throw from you the doctrine of equality, as you would the poisoned chalice. Where­ever this detestable principle gains ground to any extent, ruin must inevitably ensue. Would you stifle the noble flame of emula­tion, and encourage ignorance and idleness? Would you inculcate defiance of the laws? Would you teach servants to be disobedient [Page 162] to their masters, and children to their pa­rents? Would you sow the seeds of envy, hatred, robbery, and murder? Would you break all the bands of society asunder, and turn a civilized people into a horde of sava­ges? This is all done by the comprehensive word equality.—But they tell us, we are not to take it in the unqualified sense. In what sense are we to take it then? Either it means something more than liberty, or it means nothing at all. The misconstruction of the word liberty has done mischief enough in the world; to add to it a word of a still more dangerous extent, was to kindle a flame that never can be extinguish­ed but by the total debasement, if not de­struction, of the society, who are silly or wicked enough to adopt its use. We are told, that every government receives with its existence the latent disease that is one day to accomplish its death; but the government that is attacked with this political apoplexy is annihilated in the twinkling of an eye.

The civil disorganization of the state was but the forerunner of those curses which the Assembly had in store for their devoted country. They plainly perceived, that they never should be able to brutify the people to their wishes, without removing the for­midable barriers of religion and morality. [Page 163] Their heads were turned, but it was neces­sary to corrupt their hearts.

Besides this, the leaders in the Assembly were professed modern philosophers; that is to say, atheists or deists. Camus and Con­dorcet openly taught atheism, and Ceruti said with his last breath, ‘the only regret I have in quitting the world, is, that I leave a religion on earth.’ These words, the blas­phemy of an expiring demon, were applaud­ed by the assembled legislators. It was not to be wondered at, that the vanity of such men should be flattered in the hope of chang­ing the most christian country into the most infidel upon the face of the earth; for, there is a sort of fanaticism in irreligion, that leads the profligate atheist to seek for proselytes with a zeal that would do honour to a good cause, but which employed in a bad one be­comes the scourge of society.

The zeal of these philosophers for extirpa­ting the truth, was as great at least, as that shown by the primitive christians for its pro­pagation. But they proceeded in a very differ­ent manner. At first some circumspection was necessary. The more effectually to destroy the christian religion altogether, they began by sapping the foundations of the catholic faith, the only one that the people had been taught to revere. They formed a schism with the [Page 164] church of Rome, well knowing that the opinions of the vulgar, once set afloat, were as likely to fix on atheism as on any other system; and more so, as being less opposed to their levelling principles than the rigid though simple morality of the gospel. A religion that teaches obedience to the higher powers, inculcates humility and peace, strictly forbids robbery and murder, and, in short, enjoins on men to do as they would be done unto, could by no means suit the armed russians, who were to accomplish the views of the French Assembly.

The press, which was made free for the worst of purposes, lent most powerful aid to these destructive reformers. While the ca­tholic religion was ridiculed and abused, no other christian system was proposed in its stead; on the contrary, the profligate wret­ches who conducted the public prints, among whom were Mirabeau, Marat, Con­dorcet and Hebert, filled one half of their impious sheets with whatever could be thought of to degrade all religion in gene­ral. The ministers of divine worship, of every sect and denomination, were repre­sented as cheats, and as the avowed enemies of the sublime and sentimental something, which the Assembly had in store for the re­generation of the world.

[Page 165]Most of my readers must have heard of the magnificent church of St. Genviève, at Paris. It was one of the most noble struc­tures that the world had ever seen, and had besides the honour of being consecrated to the worship of Christ. This edifice the blas­phemers seized on as a receptacle for the remains of their "great men." From a christian church, they changed it into a pa­gan temple, and gave it the name of Pan­theon. Condorcet, pre-eminent in infamy, proposed the decree, by which the name of God and that of St. Genviève were order­ed to be effaced from the frontispiece.

To this Pantheon the ashes of Voltaire were first transported, and the Assembly spent no less than three days in determining whether those of Rousseau should not accom­pany them. This distinction, paid to two of the most celebrated deists of the age, was a full declaration of the principles as well as the intentions of the majority of the Assem­bly.

Those who have not had the patience to wade through the lies and blasphemies of Voltaire, know his principles from report. Rousseau is not so well known; and, as he was, and still continues to be, the great oracle of the revolutionists, I am persuaded a page or two on his character, and that of his works, will not be lost here; particular­ly [Page 166] as I have heard both mentioned with ap­plause in this country, by persons apparent­ly of the best intentions.

The philosopher Rousseau, the pagod of the regenerated French, was born at Gene­va; and, at a proper age, bound an ap­prentice to an artist. During his apprentice­ship he frequently robbed his master as well as other persons. Before his time was ex­pired he decamped, fled into the dominions of the king of Sardinia, where he changed the presbyterian for the catholic religion. This beginning seemed to promise fair for what followed. By an unexpected turn of fortune he became a footman, in which ca­pacity he did not forget his old habit of stealing. He is detected with the stolen goods; swears they were given him by a maid servant of the house; the girl is con­fronted with him, she denies the fact, and weeping presses him to confess the truth; but the young philosopher still persists in the lie, and the poor girl is driven from her place in disgrace.—Tired of being a serving-man, he went to throw himself on the pro­tection of a lady, whom he had seen once before, and who he protests was the most virtuous creature of her sex. This lady had so great a regard for him, that she called him her little darling, and he called her mama. Mama had a footman, who served her be­sides, [Page 167] in another capacity very much re­sembling that of a husband; but she had a most tender affection for her adopted son Rousseau, and, as she feared he was forming connections with a certain lady that might spoil his morals, she herself, out of pure vir­tue, took him—to bed with her!—This vir­tuous effort to preserve the purity of Rous­seau's heart, had a dreadful effect on the head of the poor footman, and so he poison­ed himself—Rosseau fell sick, and mama was obliged to part with little darling, while he performed a journey to the south of France, for the recovery of his health. On the road he dines with a gentleman, and lies with his wife. As he was returning back, he debat­ed with himself whether he should pay this lady a second visit or not; but, fearing he might be tempted to seduce her daughter also, virtue got the better, and determined the little darling to fly home into the arms of his mama; but, alas! those arms were fil­led with another. Mama's virtue had prompted her to take a substitute, whom she liked too well to part with, and our philo­sopher was obliged to shift for himself. I should have told the reader, that the little darling, while he resided with his mama, went to make a tour with a young musician. Their friendship was warm, like that of most young men, and they were, besides, enjoin­ed [Page 168] to take particular care of each other du­ring their travels. They travelled on for some time, agreed perfectly well, and vow­ed an everlasting friendship for each other. But, the musician, being one day taken in a fit, fell down in the street, which furnished the faithful Rousseau with an opportunity of slipping off with some of his things, and leaving him to the mercy of the people, in a town where he was a total stranger.

We seldom meet with so much villainy in a youth. His manhood was worthy of it. He turned apostate a second time, was dri­ven from within the walls of his native city of Geneva, as an incendiary, and an apos­tle of anarchy and infidelity; nor did he forget how to thieve.—At last the philoso­pher marries; but like a philosopher; that is, without going to church. He has a fa­mily of children, and, like a kind philosophi­cal father, for fear they should want after his death, he sends them to the poor-house during his lifetime!—To conclude, the phi­losopher dies, and leaves the philosopheress; his wife, to the protection of a friend; she marries a footman, and gets turned out into the street.

This is a brief sketch of the life of Jean Jacques Rousseau, the oracle of the regene­rated French, a thief, a whoremaster, an adulterer, a treacherous friend, an unnatu­ral [Page 169] father, and twice an apostate.—There wants only about a hundred murders to make him equal to the immortal Marat, whom we have seen compared to Jesus Christ. This vile wretch has the impu­dence to say, in the work that contains a confession of these his crimes, that no man can come to the throne of God, and say, I am a better man than Rousseau.

His writings, though they have very great literary merit, contain such principles as might be expected from such a man. He has exhausted all the powers of reasoning and all the charms of eloquence in the cause of anarchy and irreligion. And his writ­ings are so much the more dangerous, as he winds himself into favour with the unwary, by an eternal cant about virtue and liberty. He seems to have assumed the mask of virtue for no other purpose than that of propagat­ing with more certain success the blackest and most incorrigible vice ^*.

[Page 170]This was the man and the writer that the constituent Assembly held up to the imitation and even adoration of the poor de­luded French people. The ashes of this thieving philosopher cost the nation almost two thousand guineas in debates.

Those who know, what power novelty has on the French; with what enthusiasm, or rather fury, they adopt whatever is in [Page 171] vogue, may guess at the effect that this phi­losophical canonization of Rousseau produ­ced. Every thing was a la Rousseau; his works were hawked about, mouthed in the National Assembly (often by those who un­derstood them not) recommended in all the prints, and spouted at the sans-culotte clubs. His old boorish sayings became the liveliest traits of wit, all his manners were imitat­ed, to be crusty and ill-bred was like Jean Jacques, and, what was particularly offen­sive to every just mind, his loathsome down-looking portrait, that portrait which seems to be the chosen seat of guilt, was seen at every corner, and in every hand.

Having thus prepared the public mind, the Assembly made a bold attack on the church. They discovered, by the light of philosophy, that France contained too ma­ny churches, and, of course, too many pa­stors. Great part of them were therefore to be suppressed, and to make the innovati­on go down with the people, all tithes were to be abollished. The measure succeeded; but what did the people gain by the aboli­tion of the tithes? not a farthing; for, a tax of twenty per cent was immediately laid on the lands in consequence of it. The cheat was not perceived till it was too late.

[Page 172]But, the abolition of the tithes, the on­ly motive of which was to debase the clergy in the opinions of the people, was but a tri­fle to what was to follow. The religious orders, that is to say, the communities of monks and nuns, possessed immense landed estates, and these the honest Assembly had marked for their own. As a pretext for the seizure they first decreed, that the wealth of the religious orders belonged to the nation, to that indefinite being, that exists every where and no where, and that has devoured all, without receiving any thing.

As this act of seizing the estates of the regular clergy, was one of those that gave a decisive blow to property as well as religi­on in France, and one that has received the greatest applauses in this country, I shall enter a little at length into the flagrant inju­stice of it. Nor is the subject inapplicable to ourselves; for, though there are no reli­gious orders in America, there are many people of property, and it is of a violation of property that I here charge the As­sembly.

How the estates of the religious orders became the property of a certain somebody called the nation, in 1791, is to me wholly inconceiveable; seeing that there never was a time, when they belonged to that society of men, now [...]alled the French. Great [Page 173] part of the monasteries had been founded five, six, seven hundred years, and some above a thousand years before the most worthless of the French took it into their heads to be so many sovereigns. The founders were men of pious and austere lives, who, wishing to retire from the world, obtained grants of uncultivated land, generally in some barren and solitary spot. There they formed little miserable settle­ments, which, by their frugality and la­bour, in time became rich meadows, farms and vineyards. A French historian, speak­ing of St. Etienne, says: ‘In 1058, he retired to Citeaux, then a vast forest, in­habited only by wild beasts. Here, with the help of his followers, he built a mo­nastery of the wood of the forest; but, at first, it was no more than a group of shabby huts. Every thing bore the marks of extreme poverty: the cross was of wood, the censers of copper, and the candle-sticks of iron. All the ornaments were of coarse woolen or linnen. La­bour was the only means of subsistence with the monks of Citeaux. For many years bread was their only food, and they were often reduced to a scarcity of even that.’

In time this forest became a cultivated and flourishing estate, and the successors of [Page 174] the first proprietors were not only at their ease, but even rich. The monastery, which was at first but a clump of ill-shaped huts, built with the limbs of trees, bark and turf, was become a magnificent pile. The church was beautiful beyond description. Instead of wood and copper and iron, the symbols of religion and the sacred vases were now of gold, silver and precious stones. This abbey, at the time of the seizure by the Constituent Assembly, had an annual reve­nue of 120,000 French livres, or, about 6,000 pounds sterling.

Now, I ask any honest man; was this the property of the French nation, or not? By what rule of right, by what principle of law or justice, could this estate belong to any other than the lawful successors of the first proprietors; that is to say, the posses­sors at the epoch of the seizure? No title ever framed by man could be so good as theirs. The community at Citeaux had ne­ver ceased to exist, nor for a single moment ceased to keep possession of their Abbey and and its dependencies. They had first ob­tained a lawful grant of the land, had clear­ed, cultivated, and enriched it; and had en­joyed an uninter [...]pted possession during the space of seven hundred and thirty two years? but, at the end of the enlightened eighteenth century, the Age of Reason, up starts a horde [Page 175] of lazy worthless ruffians, calling them­selves the nation, and lay claim to their estates!

Bulteau, in speaking of St. Benedict, says: ‘The bodily labour ordered by this wise founder, was a source of peace and tranquility to the first monks, and of opulence to their successors. The mo­nasteries were long an assylum to those christians, who fled from the oppressions of the Goths and Vandals. The little learning that remained in the barbarous and dark ages, was preserved in the cloisters. It is to them we owe all the most precious remains of antiquity, as well as many modern inventions.’—In­deed, under the great disposer of all events, it is to them we owe that we are christians; that we possess the word of God, our guide to eternal life. They not only preserved this inestimable volume, but spread it in every country in the world. Without their agen­cy, our ancestors might have continued pagans; nay, we ourselves, perhaps, might now have been sacrificing our children in the hollow of a Wicker-Idol.—Every man of any reading knows, that the monasteries have continued to enrich the world with learned and useful productions. Some of the writings that do the greatest honour to [Page 176] the French nation, and to the human mind, have issued from the cloister. And yet, we have seen these men robbed of their estates, stripped of even their furniture and their vestments, driven from beneath their roofs, hunted like wild beasts, and, what I am ashamed to say, many of us have had the folly, or rather baseness, to applaud their unprincipled and blood-thirsty pursuers ^*.

[Page 177]We are told that the monks were become too rich. Indeed this was their great of­fence in the eyes of an Assembly, whose motto was: ‘War to the rich and peace to the cottager.’ But we have seen that the foundation of these riches was laid by the labour of their predecessors, and we may observe that they were augmented, not by oppression, as has been falsly asserted, but by a prudent management of their estates. Those communities that cultivated their own lands, were noted for the excel­lent manner of their cultivation, and for the superior quality of their produce; and those that rented out their farms, let them at a low rate, so as to enable the farmer to enrich the land at the same time that he en­riched himself. It was by such means that their estates became the most valuable in the country, a circumstance that poor shal­low-headed Paine has brought against them as a heinous offence. They were gentle humane masters and landlords: a man look­ed upon his fortune as made, when he be­came the tenant of a religious order.

And, how were these riches spent? Not in horses and coaches; people shut up in a cloister had no use for these. Not in balls and plays: for there they could never ap­pear. Not in rich attire and costly repasts; for the greatest part of them were clothed [Page 178] worse than common beggars, and were for­bidden the use of meat, and even of wine, the common drink of their country. Their riches did not go to agrandize their fami­lies; because, as no individual could pos­sess any thing, so he could bequeath or dis­pose of nothing. Who, then, profited from these riches?—Go ask the poor, who were happy in the neighbourhood of their convents. Go ask the aged, the infirm, the widow and the orphan. And, ask them, too, what aid and consolation they have received from the thieving philosophers of the Revo­lution.

This charge of being too rich, is the most absurd as well as the most vile that could possibly be invented. Do we say to a man, who has acquired an immense fortune by the labour of his father, or by any other means; you are too rich, and therefore your proper­ty belongs to the nation?—There is a com­munity at Bethlehem, very much resembling those we have here been speaking of. What should we think of a scoundrel legislator, who should propose to strip these people of their property, and turn them out to beg their bread, merely because the value of their lands is increased? Such was he who first proposed the seizure of the church lands in France.

[Page 179]Some of the convents in France had been founded by lay persons, upon such and such conditions; and, in case of failure on the part of the community, the property was to revert to the heirs of the donor. Foundations of this kind were exactly re­sembling those we frequently see among us, of hospitals, seminaries, &c. and the deeds were still in existence at the time of the seizure; but an Assembly that paid no re­spect to a right of prescription, founded on a thousand years of uninterrupted possession, could not be expected to pay attention to the contents of a bit of old parchment.

We ought not to be astonished at hear­ing the author of The Age of Reason attempt to justify this act of impudent fraud; but let us see how his doctrine would suit, if applied to oursleves: for this is the only way to determine on its merits. Suppose (which God forbid!) the principles of the French Revolution should be adopted by our Legis­lature, and they should declare all the meet­ing houses, seminaries, hospitals, &c. toge­ther with the estates which have been left for their support, the property of the nation, how should we receive this? Suppose an army of cut-throats should be sent to the Friends' Meeting-house and thrust them out with the points of their bayonets; suppose another should go to the episcopal church, [Page 180] drive the congregation from the altar, strip the minister of his cassock, seize on the sa­cramental cup, and turn the Church into a stable; I ask how should we like this?— But, we are told, there is a vast difference; that the monks were superstitious drones, useless to society.—Ah! let us beware. Let us take care not to condemn, because we are protestants, a religion that differs from our own in form only; a religion that has yet more votaries than any other christian profession can boast of. And, as to the re­ligious orders being useless to society, we have no proofs of this, but strong presump­tive ones of the contrary; for, we know, that France was great and happy, that it had been increasing in extent, wealth and popu­lation, since the existence of these commu­nities, However, I can by no means take upon me to prove the public utility of the monastick life; nor is it necessary; for, if no man is to possess property, unless he can prove his utility to society, I am afraid that few of us would be secure. How many hundreds of proprietors do we see, who are much worse than useless to society! Surely the public is as much benefited by a man who spends his life in a convent, as by one who spends it in a tavern, at a billiard-table, or in a play-house. Thousands and thou­sands there are who never worked a stroke, [Page 181] nor studied a single hour; vegetating mor­tals, who seem to live only to eat and drink and be carried about. Yet we have never thought of seizing their estates. No; utili­ty or inutility has nothing to do with the matter; the question before us is a simple question of right. Whether monks were necessary or useful in France, or not, we know there were such people, and that they possessed property legally acquired; and, every honest man, capable of distinguishing between right and wrong, will hold in ab­horrence the Assembly that dared to rob them of it.

When we hear of such crying acts of in­justice as this, we are naturally led to en­quire who were the first promoters of them. The reader will be astonished to hear, that the decree for this national robbery was first proposed by a bishop. Of a hundred and thirty eight French bishops, there were only four to be found, who would give their ap­probation to this deed, and one of these four was he who proposed the decree. The Abbé Barruel speaks of him in the following terms: ‘The Assembly thought it high time to consumate their designs upon the church, by seizing what still remained of its possessions, This measure was so evi­dently contrary to every principle of jus­tice and common honesty, that it was not [Page 182] easy to find a man so totally lost to every sentiment of humanity as to bring it for­ward. This second Judas was at last found in the college of the apostles. Th [...] was Taill [...]rand Perigord, bishop of A [...] ­tun. —This Perigord possessed all the base­ness, all the vices of a Jew.’— See hist. of the French clergy, page 15.

To obtain the sanction of the people to this act, they were told, that the wealth of the church would not only pay off the na­tional debt, but render taxes in future un­necessary. No deception was ever so bare faced as this; but even this was not want­ed; for the people themselves had already begun to taste the sweets of plunder. Ava­rice tempted the trading part of the nation to approve of the measure. At the time of passing the decree they were seen among the first to applaud it. They saw an easy means of obtaining those fine rich estates the possession of which they had, perhaps long coveted. In vain were they told, that the purchaser would partake in the infamy of the robbery; that, if the title of the communities could not render property secure, that same property could never be secure under any title the plunderers could give. In vain were they told, that in sanc­tioning the seisure of the wealth of others, they were sanctioning the seisure of their [Page 183] own, whenever that all-devouring monster, the sovereign people, should call on them for it. In vain were they told all this: they purchased: they saw with pleasure the plun­dered clergy driven from their dwellings; but scarcely had they taken possession of their ill-gotten wealth, when not only that, but the remains of their other property were wrenched from them. Since that we have seen decree upon decree launched forth against the rich: their account books have been submitted to public examination; they have been obliged to give drafts for the funds they possessed even in foreign coun­tries; all their letters have been intercepted and read. How many hundreds of them have we seen led to the scaffold, merely because they were proprietors of what their sovereign stood in need of! these were acts of unexampled tyranny; but, as they re­spected the persons who applauded the sei­zure of the estates of the church, they were perfectly just. Several of these avari­cious purchasers have been murdered with­in the walls of those buildings, whence they had assisted to drive the lawful proprietors: this was just: it was the measure they had meted to others. They shared the fate of the injured clergy, without sharing the pity which that fate excited. When dragged [Page 184] forth to slaughter in their turn, they were left without even the right of complaining: the last stab of the assassin was accompanied with the cutting reflection, that it was just.

I have dwelt the longer on this subject, as it is, perhaps, the most striking and most awful example of the consequences of a vio­lation of property, that the world ever saw. Let it serve to warn all those who wish to raise their fortunes on the ruin of others, that, sooner or later, their own turn must come. From this act of the Constituent Assembly we may date the violation, in France, of every right that men ought to hold dear. Hence the seizure of all gold and silver as the property of the nation: hence the law preventing the son to claim the wealth of his father: hence the abomi­nable tyranny of requisitions; and hence thousands and thousands of the murders, that have disgraced unhappy France.

Since the seizure of the church-estates, there has not, in fact, been any such thing as private property in France; for, though the Constituent Assembly did not pass a decree of this import, they knew perfectly well how to pass decrees and establish regu­lations amounting to the same thing. Some of their enormous contributions on the rich, were called patriotic gifts; but he who refu­sed to pay the gift inserted in the list, knew [Page 185] he had but a few hours to live. The mo­ney and jewels, deposited at the bar of the Assembly and on the altar of the country, amounted to immense sums. These were held out as a proof of a general approbation of their measures; but had the Assembly been candid, they would have confessed, that these offerings were the pure effect of fear, of a panic that had seized all the pro­prietors in the nation, and that each giver's hatred to their cause might be measured by the sum he deposited. It was not a grate­ful free-will offering, but a sacrifice, that the trembling wretch came to offer at the shrine of tyranny, in order to save his house from the flames, or his own head, or that of some dear relation or parent, from the scaffold. Could a man, reduced to acts like this, be said to possess any thing?

The successors of the Constituent Assem­bly laid aside the mask, as no longer neces­sary. On the 13th of March, 1794, all the Merchants of Bourdeaux (known for one of the most infamously patriotic towns in the kingdom) were arrested in one day, and condemned, in presence of the guillo­tine, to a fine of one hundred millions of French livres, upwards of four millions ster­ling. On the 18th of April, the rich Bank­er, La Bord [...], after having purchased his life eight times, was guillotined, and the re­mainder [Page 186] of his riches confiscated. On the 10th of May, twenty seven rich Farm­ers-General were executed, because they had amassed riches under the monarchy. Finally, on the 27th of June, all property, of whatever description, was decreed to be­long to the nation, and was put in a state of requisition accordingly, as the persons of the whole of the inhabitants had been be­fore.

The milk-and-water admirers of the Con­stituent Assembly pretend to be shocked at these measures; but, what are these mea­sures more than an improvement on those of that Assembly? The progress was not only natural, but even necessary to the sup­port of the revolution. Had there been still church-estates to seize, und monks to murder, it is probable, that the tyrants, who have succeeded the Constituent Assem­bly, would not have surpassed their prede­cessors; but, that source being exhausted, they were obliged to find out others, or re­turn to order and obedience. And, I should be glad to know, if the property of one individual, or one society, was become the property of the sovereign people by vir­tue of a decree of one Assembly, why the [...] claim should not be made to the pro­perty of other individuals, or other societies. Nor can I believe, whatever Atheists and [Page 187] Deists may say to the contrary, that it was any more unjust to guillotine Bankers and Merchants, or even members of the Constitu­ent Assembly, than to guillotine or massacre poor, defenceless, friendless Priests. There is such an intimate connection between the security of property, and that of the person to whom that property belongs, that one can never be said to be safe, while the other is in danger. Tyrant princes, tyrant assem­blies, or tyrant mobs, when once they are suffered to take away with impunity the pro­perty of the innocent man, will feel little scruple at taking away his life also. Rob­bery and murder are the natural auxiliaries of each other, and, with a people rendered ferocious and hardened by an infidel system that removes all fear of an hereafter, they must for ever be inseparable.

Before the decree was passed for the as­sumption of the estates of the regular clergy, every calumny that falshood could invent, and every vexation that Tyranny could en­force, were employed to debase the whole body of the clergy and the religion they taught. Songs and caricatures were sung, or hawked about, by shameless strumpets in the pay of the Assembly. In these not on­ly the clerical functions and the lives of the clergy were ridiculed, but even the life of [Page 188] Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. The Incarnation of our Saviour became the sub­ject of a farce, in the smutty language of Parisian fish-women. Who were the cha­racters in this farce, I leave the shuddering reader to conceive.

A decree, in form of an invitation, ^* was issued, for bringing the gold and silver from the churches to the mint. It was well known, that there were none of these me­tals in the churches, except the vases, the crucifixes, and other symbols, hitherto held sacred. What an effect the coining up of these must have on the minds of the giddy multitude, is not difficult to imagine. Ma­ny, however, even of the most depraved, felt a momentary horror; but this horror the Assembly knew how to do away. Hun­dreds, I might say thousands, of abandoned scriblers were employed to propagate the new principles. Their little filthy ditties were spread through all the departments, at the expence of the nation. Some of these [Page 189] were catechisms in rhyme, in which the Constitution was substituted for God, the Assembly for the saints, and both recom­mended to the adoration of the French pa­triots. The journal, or Letter, as it was called, of Pere du Chêne, written by one Hebert, and of which it is said fifty thou­sand copies were struck off daily, was sent into the towns and villages by the carriers of the decrees of the Assembly. This He­bert, whose Strumpet has since been ador­ed at Paris, as the Goddess of Reason, was a professed atheist. His journal contained the most outrageous abuse of all that was respectable and sacred, interlarded with oaths and execrations without number. I have one now before me, which has for ti­tle: ‘Lettre du veritable Pere du Chêne, bougrement patriotic.’ in English: ‘Letter of the true Father du Chêne b—gerly patriotic;’ I would here insert an extract from this letter; but, I trust I shall be be­lieved, when I say, the contents are fully answerable to the title. Such were the agents of Condorcet and his colleagues: thus did they corrupt the morals of the peo­ple; thus did they lead them from one de­gree of vice to another; thus were they hard­ened up to rob and to murder; and thus [Page 190] did the boasted Constituent Assembly lay the foundation of all those horrors we have since heard of.

The magistrates in the different munici­palities, chosen from the scum of the nati­on, distributed these infernal writings among the people in their precincts, and particu­larly among the young people. If, by chance, some magistrate was found, too scrupulous to execute their will, means were soon invented to get rid of him. Some pretext or other was never wanting to ex­cite the mob to put an end to him and his resistance. Chatel, Mayor of St. Denys was one of this description. The mob were told that this man was the cause of the dear­ness of bread. They flew to his house, and obliged him to reduce the price accord­ing to their will; though it was well known, that he had not the power to reduce it at all unless at his own expence. The rabble were dispersing; but they had not fulfilled the bloody wishes of the revolutionary agents, who had nothing less in view than the lowering of the price of bread. They were instigated to return to the unfortunate magistrates. First, they attempted to hang him; but, wearied with his resistance, one of them took out his knife, and cut his head partly off, while several others prick­ed him with their bayonets. The unhappy [Page 191] victim was still alive after the back of his neck was cut assunder, and was heard to groan out: ‘for heaven's sake kill me! kill me! you make me suffer too long!’—The sanguinary villain, who had begun to cut his head off, now threw away his knife, and borrowed that of his comrade, with which he finished the work. When he found that his own knife was not sufficient, he said, with a cool indifference: ‘lend me your knife, for mine is not worth a curse.’ That which was lent him was a little two-penny knife with a wooden handle.—During this time, other assassins gave him several stabs, with their knives, in the belly and stomach; one of them turned his knife slowly in the flank of the dying man, and said to him, laughing: ‘Does that enter well? Don't you find the day-light peep into you?’—He at last expired, after the most inconceivable torments. His body was dragged along the streets of St. Denys with his head tied to his feet.—A resolution of the town has since declared him innocent of any offence whatever: he had given abundant assistance to the poor the winter before: the diminu­tion he had just made in the price of bread was at his own expence; and this barbarous punishment was his recompence. His wife went distracted, and has ever since been in a mad-house. His as [...]sins obtained pardon [Page 192] from the Assembly, a circumstance much less surprising, than that they should think it necessary to ask it. See du Gour's Me­moire, page 57.

Examples of this kind, and such were wanting in very few parts of the country, could not fail to insure an implicit obedience on the part of the magistrates.

The debasement of religion was nearly completed by the public sale of the suppres­sed churches and monasteries. The gros­sest indecency presided at all these demoniac scenes. When the vile agent of the Assem­bly, hammer in hand, had exhausted his auctioneer rhetoric, in recommending a church as an excellent barn, stable, or play­house, it was knocked down to the base and avaricious speculator, while the hireling mob shouted applause. The church of St. Aldegonde at St. Omers (I love to cite in­stances) the highest in that ancient town, and for hundreds of years the pride of its inhabitants, was sold to a Jew of Dunkirk, for the pitiful sum of 20,000 French livres in assignats, not more than 200 pounds ster­ling; not half the cost of one of the pillars. This beautiful edifice by the spire of which the town was known at a great distance, had been chosen for destruction, that the humiliation of religion might be the more striking. It met with such treatment as [Page 193] might be expected from the hands of an in­fidel. Its lofty spire was tumbled to the earth in less than a month: the body of the church was turned into a ropewalk, and the Jew proprietor, to complete the degrada­tion of Christianity, left a representation of the Lord's Supper uneffaced in the chancel. What must be the grief, what the indigna­tion of the thinking and pious part of the in­habitants of St. Omers, thus to see their fa­vourite church, the sanctuary of their God, and the God of their fathers, delivered, for a bundle of depreciated paper-money, into the hands of a descendant of the murderers of him, to whose worship it was consecrated!

To give the reader a just idea of the ribaldry of the scenes of brutal impiety, exhibited at the pillage of the convents, is totally impossible. A dozen or two of carts rattling along with a commissary at their head [...]llowed by an escort of ragamuffins, decorated with a bit of three coloured ribbon, and armed with hammers, axes, crow-bars and spades, ge­nerally formed the corps for such an expe­dition. Hardly were the doors opened when the vaults rang with their hammering and their oaths. In a few hours the whole was gutted. The decorations of the altar, the priest's vestments, statues, pictures, books, manuscripts, the most precious pie­ces of antiquity, the productions of long and [Page 194] laborious lives of study, were hauled away as so much rubbish. The paintings on the doors, walls, ceilings, and other fixtures, were effaced or disfigured; the fury of the enlightened ruffians descended even to the graves of the deceased fathers.

At the expulsion of the nuns, the con­duct of the revolutionists, was, if possible, still more swinish and cruel. While the gibing commissary pulled aside their veils to examine their faces, his blackguard at­tendants congratulated them on the pleasures they were going to enjoy in the world, and this in a language calculated to raise a blush on the cheek of a common street-walker. They seemed to enjoy their tears, and even to make some sacrifices to augment them. Had any one a piece of needle-work which she wished to preserve, it was rent to pieces before her face. A singing bird that had the misfortune to have been the companion of the solitary hours of its mistress, was sure to be taken from her and killed. To these de­jected and defenceless females, every insult and indignity was offered, not forgetting the last of which beastly libertines can be guilty.

In a country where the crucifix was sent to the mint, where churches were put up at auction; where the half-worn cassock, the surplice, and the veil, made part of the as­sortment of a dealer in old-cloths, and were [Page 195] exposed to public sale on the market-place; where the ministers of the gospel were scof­fed at, reviled, and frequently murdered with as little ceremony as one would kill a dog; where the most daring blasphemi [...]s were uttered and published and spread through the country, not only with the per­mission of its governors, but by their direc­tion; in a country where all this was prac­tised, religion could not be of long dura­tion. Religion, and even the Catholic re­ligion, did, however, still subsist in France, at least, in form. The Assembly had as yet passed no positive decree for its abolition. They had robbed the church, had stripped its altars, and degraded its ministers; but still the most pious and active of those mi­nisters were left in the exercise of their functions. The parochial clergy, though deprived of the tithes, had a stipend allowed them. They yet remained with their pa­rishioners, many of whom, indeed nearly all the elderly and sober part of them, conti­nued as firmly attached to their pastors, as at any former period.

Things were not suffered to remain long in this state. The Constituent Assembly well knew, that they and religion could never exist for any length of time in the same country. The parochial clergy were [Page 196] men of talents and industry. They gene­rally decided all the little disputes between their parishioners; to which amicable capa­city, they often joined that of physician or surgeon; and these their beneficent services were always rendered without fee or reward. Even the atheists and deists themselves had repeatedly acknowledged their virtuous modesty, and the great utility they were of to the community at large. Such a body of men, immoveably attached to the reli­gion they taught, was truly formidable to the new tyrants. Religion had received a severe blow; but, if these men retained their cures, it might recover. Nay, what was still more dreadful, the monarchy it­self might recover along with it; and it is not difficult to conceive, how an idea like this must haunt the minds of the pupils of the savage and impious Diderot, who hoped to see ‘the last of kings strangled with the guts of the last of priests.’ In short, the parochial clergy, were the only men on earth they had now to fear, and these they got rid of by a stratagem worthy of an As­sembly, the leaders of which joined to the most hardened wickedness, the profoundest dissimulation.

They laid aside the Rights of Man, toge­ther with the famous constitution, from which they took the adjunct to their name, [Page 197] and which we have since seen burnt by the hands of the common hangman (or rather common guillotiner) in that very city of Pa­ris, where it had been issued amidst the ap­plauses and even adorations of the populace. They laid aside the discussion of this instru­ment of short-lived and ridiculous memory, to draw up another, which they were pleased to call, "the Civil Constitution of the Clergy." They were constitution mad, absolutely frantic.

It might be sufficient to say of this latter constitution, that it was just as subversive of religion as their other constitution was of every principle of government and sound po­licy. They knew it to be in direct opposi­tion to the very nature of the catholic reli­gion: yet they had the assurance to tell the people, that it was not; they even went so far as to protest, that they would live and die in the religion of their forefathers, at the very moment when they were taking the surest measure in the world for destroying it. They were led to this hypocritical de­claration from a fear that the body of the people were not yet ripe for a total abolition of religion, and, as we shall see in the se­quel, this fear was not entirely unfounded. By persuading the people, that nothing was intended against their faith, they had an ad­ditional handle against the clergy, by repre­senting [Page 198] them as unfriendly to their "Civil Constitution," merely because it was neces­sary to the support of the Rights of Man.

This instrument did not, however, pass into a law, without considerable resistance. There were yet some honest and virtuous men even among the members of the Con­stituent Assembly. These had remained with them, not to aid in overturning the government, and effecting the dreadful revolution that has since rendered the coun­try a slaughter-house, but to oppose the de­structive measures of the philosophers, and, if possible save the sinking state. At the head of these was the learned and eloquent Abbé Maury. He opposed this "Civil Constitution," with all the powers of rea­soning and all the charms of eloquence: but it was casting pearls before swine. When was an atheist open to conviction. The de­cree passed, and was soon after followed by another, obliging the clergy to swear to ob­serve and maintain the "Civil Constitu­tion." This oath they could not take without breaking that which they had taken at entering into the priesthood; and that the Assembly had every reason to suppose they would not do. Whether they did or not, however, the end of their tyrants was answered: if they refused, they were to be driven from their livings; if they complied, [Page 199] they must be looked upon as apostates, and be deserted by all those who were still attach­ed to them. In either case the tottering re­mains of religion must come to the ground. The clergy, and indeed the whole nation, and all Europe, saw the real object of this inhuman and impious decree; but the As­sembly, surrounded with their enlightened myrmidons, the Parisian mob, bid defiance to earth and heaven.

Generally speaking, the clergy were re­solved not to take the oath. ‘Lose no time, said the Abbé Maury, in the de­livery of your challenge. By shedding our blood you may ingratiate yourselves with your constituents. Lose, then, not a single moment. Your victims are here; they are ready. To their torments add not that of suspence. Why not vote at once for our execution, glut your hatred, and quench for a little your thirst for blood? Hasten, I say, while the power is in your hands; for remember, I now foretell, your reign will be of short durati­on.’

This prophetic address, which we have seen so fully verified, served only to inflame. Eight days only were given the clergy to determine on compliance or refusal, during which no stratagem that base and degene­rate [Page 200] tyranny could devise, was left unessay­ed to intimidate them. This was ever their practice, when they had an important blow to strike. Rochefoucauld, formerly a duke, declared, at the time the decree for the sei­zure of the monasteries was under delibera­tion, that ‘the lives of the bishops and priests, in the Assembly, depended upon the passing of it;’ and, in order to silence all those who opposed it, a list of their names was stuck up on the walls, with a promise of a reward of ‘ twelve hundred livres to any patriot, who would assassinate them.’ Ac­cording to this laudable custom, this in­stance of French liberty, when the day for taking the oath, or, as it was well termed, "the for-swearing day" arrived, the Assem­bly took care to call in the aid of the fish-women and mob. ‘To the lamp-post with the non-juring bishops and priests!’ was echoed from the streets and the galleries. The ruffians were prepared for murder, and were howling for their prey, like so ma­ny wolves round a sheep-fold.

Let the reader imagine himself in the situation of one of these unfortunate cler­gymen: an oath of apostacy before him, and a halter behind his back, and then let him give me his opinion of the rights of man.

[Page 201]This did not intimidate the clergy, only thirty of whom could be prevailed on to submit, and these were already known to have abandoned their religion. When the oath was tendered to the bishop of Agen: ‘Gentlemen, says he, I lament not the loss of my fortune; but there is another loss which I should ever lament; the loss of your esteem and my faith. I could not fail to lose both, if I took the oath now proposed to me.’ The old bishop of Poitiers, fearing he might lose so fair an opportunity of bearing testimony of his sin­cerity, advanced to the tribune, and cal­ling on the president to command silence; ‘Gentlemen, said he, I am seventy years old; I have been thirty years a bi­shop: I will never disgrace my gray hairs by an oath of apostacy.’ Upon this manly declaration of the reverend old pre­late, the clergy rose from their seats, thank­ed him for his example, and told the As­sembly he had expressed their unanimous sentiments.

Not being a Roman Catholic, I hope I shall be excused, when I freely declare, that I much question, whether the ministers of any protestant communion, in a moment so terrible, surrounded with assassins and without a single friend, would have shown such a noble intrepidity. ‘They have [Page 202] lost their money,’ said the profligate Mirabeau on this occasion, ‘but they have saved their honour.’ ^* And, if this was [Page 203] the case, what had the Assembly done? If, to preserve honour, it was necessary to refuse an obedience to their decrees, what sort of decrees must those be?

The Assembly were disconcerted by this firm resistance on the part of the clergy? they knew the clergy in general would ne­ver take the oath, but they did not imagine [Page 204] that those amongst themselves, would, amidst the vociferations of their cannibals, have the courage to give such a positive de­nial. For a moment they felt abashed; but they were gone too far to think of re­treating. The apostate Abbé Gregoire, whom we have since seen amongst the or­ganizers of a pagan festival, was, on this occasion chosen to convince the clergy, that the oath might be taken, without any vio­lation of their faith. After this, in order to deprive the clergy of an opportunity of defending their opinions in opposition to the oath, they were ordered to advance and take it at once. This decree had no effect: not a man advanced. Now the matter was brought to a point: the decree for enforcing the oath must be repealed, or the clergy must be driven from their livings, and those in the Assembly from their feats. It is hardly necessary to say that the latter was adopted: one tyrannical measure is the na­tural and inevitable consequence of another.

A decree was now passed for the expul­sion of all the non-juring bishops and priests, and for the choosing of others in their stead. From this day, it may be said, there was no such thing as an established religion in France. The ax had long been laid to the root of the tree; it was ready to fall, and this stroke levelled it with the earth.

[Page 205]Had the dispute been about this or that tenet; had the oath been imposed with an intention of exchanging one religion for ano­ther, the case would have been different; the expulsion might have taken place without any very considerable injury to the morals of the people. But, the struggle was that of religion against irreligion, that of chris­tianity against atheism.

It was (I hope it is so no longer) the opinion of Doctor Priestley, and many other philosophical divines, that any change what­ever was preferable to the continuation of the catholic religion in France. There is a passage in Moore's journal, which contains so complete an answer to every thing these gentlemen have advanced on this subject, that I am surprised, considering the princi­ples of the journalist and his companion Lauderdale, that it ever found a place in that volume.

The Doctor, being at Abbeville, met with a protestant clergyman, whom he con­gratulated on the deliverance of himself and his brethren, from the vexation of Romish persecution. The clergyman seemed to la­ment, that along with the spirit of persecu­tion, that of religion daily diminished. ‘Upon which, says the Doctor, I ob­served that, as nothing could be more opposite to true religion than a spirit of [Page 206] persecution, the former, it was to be hoped, would return without the latter; but, in the mean time, the protestants were happy in not only being tolerated in the exercise of their religion, but also on being rendered capable of enjoying every privilege and advantage which the catholics themselves enjoy.’

‘We are not allowed those advantages, resumed the clergyman, from any regard they bear to our religion, but from a to­tal indifference of their own.’

‘Whatever may be the case, replied I, the effect is the same with regard to you.’

‘No, said he, the effect might be bet­ter, not only with respect to us, but to all France; for the spirit of persecution might have disappeared, without an in­difference for all religion coming in its place: and in that case there would have been more probability of the true reli­gion gaining ground; for it is easier to draw men from an erroneous doctrine to a true one, than to impress the truths of religion on minds which despise all religion whatever.’

‘But, although you may not be able to make converts of them, I replied, still you may live happy among them, in the quiet possession of your own religion and all your other advantages.’

[Page 207] ‘I doubt it much, resumed he; being persuaded that, in a country where re­ligious sentiments are effaced from the minds of the bulk of the people, crimes of the deepest guilt will prevail in spite of all the restraints of law.’

How fully, alas! has the opinion of this good clergyman been confirmed! here we see a man living upon the spot, a French­man and a protestant, lamenting the de­cay of the catholic religion, and trembling for the consequences. This man plainly perceived the drift of the philosophical le­gislators: he saw that the destruction of all religion was their object, while they pretended to be correcting its abuses. Very far was he from saying, with our zealous reformers, that ‘any change was preferable to the continuation of popery,’ and yet, I think, we ought to allow him to be as much interested in a change, and as good a judge of its conveniences and in­conveniences, as persons on this side the sea; except, indeed, that he might not be enlightened by the rays of modern philoso­phy. ^*

[Page 208]From this digression we must return to the expulsed clergy. The parish priests ge­nerally followed the example of their bishops in refusing to take the oath. Others were, of course, appointed to replace them. Tail­lerand Perigorde, whom we have seen pro­posing the assumption of the church-estates, was now become a sort of Pope to the mo­dern church, and was busily employed, laying unholy hands on the heads of the new bishops. Gobet, one of the four bi­shops [Page 209] who had forsworn themselves, was re­warded for his apostacy by the bishoprick of Paris. Vagabond philosophical abbés, who had never been able to obtain admit­tance into the priesthood under the old government, were now not only accepted, but sought after. To these were added the secular priests and monks who had apostatiz­ed. Even the wretches who had been ex­pulsed from their cures, or orders, for irre­gular or criminal conduct, were now called in from Germany and the low-countries. What a fight must it be, to those who yet preserved some respect for their religion and their country, to see these strollers, with their strumpets at their heels, return­ing to take on them the care of the morals and fouls of a numerous people! after all, the number of apostates was insufficient: a great many parishes remained without any priest at all.

The installment of the new priests was commonly, not to say always, attended with tumult and violence. Many of their predecessors were knocked down, stabbed, or shot, at their church doors, the day, or day after, they had refused to conform. The priest of the village of Spet-Saux, while he was explaining to his parishioners his rea­sons for refusing to take the oath, received [Page 210] a mu [...]ket ball in his br [...], and tumbled dead from the pulpit into the [...].

Where there was no resistance but on the part of the priest, an assassination put an end to the struggle; but, in some places, the resistance was more general. The pari­shioners were divided; one part the champions of the apostate, and the other, those of the old priest. Church time was the moment for deciding these disputes, and the Church-yard the field of action. These affrays were often bloody; victory sometimes leaned to the side of justice; but, as the apostate appeared in person at the head of his troops, as he had the young peo­ple generally on his side, and always the mob and municipal officers, with their na­tional guards, he seldom failed to keep the field. Some of these wretches have been seen conducted to the altar to the sound of drums and trumpets, at the very moment when their partizans were murdering on the outside of the church.

The expelling of the parochial clergy tried the real sentiments of the body of the French people more than any one act of their tyrants ever did, before or since. Ge­nerally speaking, the trial was honourable to them; for, if we except Paris, and some other places immediately under the influ­ence of the revolutionary clubs, they wish­ed [Page 211] to retain their ancient pastors, and did not scruple to declare that wish, notwith­standing the vociferations of hundreds of mob in the pay of the Assembly; not­withstanding all these petty assemblies of subaltern tyrants, called municipal officers, who came to order them to receive an apos­tate, in the name of the law; notwithstand­ing thousands of spies and assassins, ever ready to betray and murder them; in spite of all these, whole parishes flocked round their priests, pressed them to continue, fol­lowed them to the fields, and left the apos­tates to say mass to the bare walls. Many of the latter, though they continued to re­ceive the revolutionary salary for upwards of two years, never could boast of above three or four voluntary hearers.

Wherever this obstinate attachment to religion appeared, the Assembly knew how to make the refractory feel their authority. True tyrants, they suffered no one to thwart their will with impunity. Property, honour, conscience, all must yield to their sultanic decrees!

Condorcet, the atheist Condorcet, pro­posed flagellation; and this was pretty com­monly inflicted on the women and children who assisted at the masses of the non-juring clergy. The Abbé Barruel (page 79 of the [Page 212] French edition) tells us, that three sisters of one of the Charity-houses at Paris, expired under the rods of the assassins. Ungrateful monsters! the lives of these women had been totally devoted to the service of the sick, the lame and the blind. By their vow they were excluded from the pleasures of the world, without being excluded from its pains. They had made a voluntary surren­der of all they possessed, had assumed the garb, and submitted to the austerities of the monastic life, in order to devote them­selves to the mournful occupation of attend­ing on the poor who laboured under infirmi­ties. It was said, they did this to secure themselves, a place in heaven; and most certainly they took the surest way. I feel a reluctance to call such people superstitious; for, if they were so, their superstition was of a most amiable kind, and surely nothing short of the principles of this hellish revolu­tion could have hardened the hearts of men to scourge them to death, and that merely because they would not disgrace themselves by receiving the sacrament from the conta­minated hands of an apostate.

It were endless to enumerate all the dif­ferent sorts of persecution exercised against those who remained attached to their reli­gion. Little children were beaten half to death; the hair and ears of women were [Page 213] cut off; they were mounted on asses, and led about in the most unseemly and shocking guise. The instance of John Can­tabel deserves particular notice. Cantabel was an honest peasant, sincerely attached to the religion of his fathers. He happened to have a little catechism which had been pub­lished by the non-juring clergy; it was found in his house; and this was a sufficient crime. A committee of municipal officers ordered the catechism to be burnt; a great fire was made; Cantabel was brought forth, and commanded to throw the book into it. "No," says the heroic peasant, ‘it contains the principles of my religion; it has been my guide and my comfort, and it now gives me the courage to tell you, that I will never commit it to the flames.’ Upon this he was threatened, but still he remained resolute. One of the ruffians seized a flaming torch, and held it under his hand. "Burn on," said he, ‘you may burn not only my hand, but my whole body, before I will do any thing to dishonour my religion.’ He was afterwards mounted on a horse, his back to the head, and the tail in his hand, and was thus conducted about amidst the shouts of the rabble. The vile wretches, when tired with their sport, suffered him to creep home, more dead than alive.—This is the liberty of [Page 214] conscience in the "Age of Reason.!" This is the toleration we might expect from atheists, from these infidel philosophers, who are con­tinually exclaiming against the prejudices of their forefathers, and against the sad effects of bigotry and religious zeal. In the cant of these enlightened reformers, this peasant was a fanatic, an aristocrat, a rebel to the law, and, as such, they will tell you that he was wor­thy of death.

Notwithstanding the partial opposition the apostates met with, and the horror their conduct, as well as their ministry ex­cited in all good minds, they, at last, found themselves in possession of the churches, to the exclusion of the ancient priests. Such of these latter as had escaped death, were now bereft of all means of subsistence; they were therefore obliged to become a charge to their faithful parishioners. Had there been any such things as toleration and liber­ty under the Constituent Assembly, these unfortunate men might still have found a retreat amongst their wealthy neighbours, that would have left them no reason to re­gret the loss of their salaries. But the greatest part of their wealthy neighbours were already reduced to their own situation, and those who were not, knew that the re­ception of a non-juring priest would amount to a proof of aristocracy, sufficient to lead [Page 215] them to the guillotine. The expulsed priests were, then, obliged to take shelter in some obscure and miserable cabin, and often was the terror so great, that, like persons infec­ted with the plague, no one would admit them beneath his roof.

From such a state of misery and humili­ation, some fled in disguise to the countries surrounding France; some to recesses in the forests, whither the peasants of the neigh­bourhood brought them the means of exis­tence. Numbers, however, still remained in their towns and villages. Seeing the whole country swarming with assassins, they thought, perhaps, they might as well wait the stab in their own parishes as to seek it at a distance. Many, too, from age and infir­mity, were absolutely incapable of travel­ling; and, besides the small remainder of a life so full of bitterness, could not, with such men, be an object of sufficient impor­tance to induce them to abandon those of their parishioners, who still sought their ad­vice and consolation. Some were retained by their affection to their relations, or their parents; it is so hard to break the bands of nature, to tear oneself from all one holds dear, that the risk of death in competition with such a separation, loses half its terrors.

The ancient priests who remained in their parishes, or near them, though often oblig­ed [Page 216] to secret themselves, and though, to ap­pearances, generally shunned, were resorted to by great numbers, particularly of the el­derly people. I have already observed, that, among the youth, there was a pretty gene­ral bias toward the apostates. Hence en­sued such scenes of division and persecution as no country on earth except France ever witnessed. Friends were divided against friends; one branch of a family against another. It often happened that the parents treated their children as apostates, and the children their parents as aristocrats; quar­rels and bloodshed were as often the conse­quences. We have seen (page 29 of this volume) a son cut off the heads of his fa­ther and mother, because they refused to attend at the mass of an apostate, carry the heads to his club, and receive applauses for the deed. Acts like this were not frequent; but others very near approaching it, were not only frequent but general. Sons, and even daughters, have been known to beat and lacerate their parents in the most cruel manner. Hundreds of both sexes have been led to prison and publicly accused by their children. A man at Faulconberg in Artois, blew his wife's brains out with his musket, and left her wallowing in her blood on the hearth with seven small children cry­ing round her!

[Page 217]Can any man, with the common feelings of humanity about his heart, contemplate such scenes of horror, without execrating the revolution that gave rise to them? ^*

The apostate priests failed not to fan the flames of discord and division. To ingrati­ate themselves with the young and igno­rant, they mixed in all their amusements and debauches, treated them at their own houses, and instituted civic festivals for the mob, with whom they were continually surrounded. Their masses were sung midst the shouts of robbers and murderers, and [Page 218] often interrupted by the arrival of some in­nocent conscientious person, dragged in to assist at what he looked upon as a profana­tion. Their churches resembled guard-houses, rather than places of divine wor­ship. In proportion as they perceived them­selves neglected and despised, their wrath against their unshaken predecessors increas­ed. Vexed and humiliated to find, that all the respectable part of their parishioners took as much pains to avoid them, as to seek a communication with their old pas­tors, the whole weight of their vengeance fell on these latter. In their existence itself they saw a memento of their own infamy. There is not a species of cruelty, that the most obdurate can devise, which they left unessayed. They hunted them from their retreats, from the houses of their friends and relations, from the woods and caverns even, to expose them to insult and murder. The infirmities of age, the tears of parents, nothing could soften the hearts of these apostate wretches. We have seen enough of the sufferings of the old clergy in the first Chapter of this work; but there is yet one instance which I must quote. ‘I was at Trois Rivieres (says le voyageur de la Revo­lution) a little village in Picardy. I saw several women running by the inn where I had put up; they all seemed much [Page 219] alarmed. I asked the landlord what was the matter: he told me that the revolu­tionary priest, provoked to find that none of the village attended at his mass, had been that morning to Ville D' Eu for a party of national guards, to aid him in driving the former priest from a little cottage, where he and his mother had taken shelter. The man gave me a most affecting account of this good priest, who was upwards of fourscore years of age, and who had been the rector of that place for more than fifty years. On the day he was to deliver his cure into the hands of the apostate, he summoned his little flock to meet him in the church for the last time. Not a soul was absent: old or young. The women carried their infants in their arms, and two old people, not able to walk were carried on couches. My children, says the old man, I have pres­sed your tender hands on the baptismal font: I have sung the requiem for the souls of your fathers: I must now bid you an eter­nal farewel, deprived of the consolation of leaving my ashes amongst you.—Here he ceased; tears stifled his voice: the sobs and cries of his audience rendered the scene too much for him.—While the land­lord was speaking, we heard a discharge of muskets, and a loud shriek of woman. [Page 220] We ran to the spot. The peasants of the village, about forty in number, had as­sembled round the cottage with clubs to defend their pastor; but, the enemy hav­ing fire arms, they had been obliged to give way, leaving two of their compani­ons dead and several wounded. I now beheld a fight sufficient to melt the heart of a tyger. Two ruffians of the national guard were dragging out this venerable old man by the hair of his head, by those locks as white as snow. He had received a wound in his cheek, from which the blood ran down on his gar­ments. In this situation was he led off, bare headed and bare footed, towards Ville D' Eu, while his poor old parent, who had been many years blind and dumb, remained on her bed, happily in­sensible of the sorrows of her son. As the villains pulled him along, all the words he was heard to utter, were, My Mother! Oh! My Mother!—The women and children of the village followed the escort with cries and lamentations, till the savages drove them back with the points of their bayonets.’

Nor were those of the laity spared, who resorted to the old clergy for the ex­ercise of the rites which they looked upon as essential. A new married couple hav­ing refused to have the ceremony perform­ed [Page 221] by one of the apostates, a party of his myrmidons broke in upon them, the wedding night. The husband made his escape: the wife, in a swoon, became the prey of the party. They gratified their brutal passion, without gratifying their fe­rocity. They tore off her breasts, as a tyger might have done with his claws, and threw them on the floor. They then left her to wait till death relieved her from her horrible situation. ^*

I should have scrupled inserting a fact like this, though taken from so respectable a work, if the former part of this volume did not contain others, if possible surpassing it: I say if possible; for I declare I know not which is most shocking, the tearing off a woman's breasts, or the ripping a child from her womb, and sticking it on the point of a bayonet. Indeed, the greatest part of the facts related here, are so much more shocking and terrific than any thing [Page 222] we have ever before had an idea of, that common murders appear as trifling.

By means like these, the old clergy and their adherents were extirpated, and reli­gion along with them. The business of the new clergy (if the wretches deserve the name) was not to establish one church on the ruins of another: it would be as pre­posterous to suppose that an Assembly of Atheists and Deists had any such intention, as to suppose that a horde of apostates were calculated for the work. These latter were, in fact, so many missionaries of blasphemy and murder, sent into the provinces pur­posely to destroy the ancient priesthood. The assembly foresaw that, when that was done, their new priests would at any time become the apostles of infidelity.

It must be confessed that these legislators did not want for cunning: an elegant wri­ter has lately called them "architects of ruin;" and, indeed, they possessed the art of destroying in its utmost perfection. Their calculations with respect to their new priests were extremely just; they came out to an unit. When they had annihilated their predecessors, they were not only ready to second the decrees for the abolition of chri­stianity altogether; they were not only in­strumental therein, but they had led the way. Several began to teach the religion [Page 223] of Reason in the Jacobin clubs, of which they were all members, and even in the pulpit. The garb of a priest itself became a burthen to them, and they humbly asked leave to quit it for the more honourable one of the national guard. The apostate bishop of Moulin, who had been consecrat­ed by the unhallowed hands of Tailler [...]nd, wrote to the Convention that he officiated with a pike and liberty cap, instead of the croiser [...] and the mitre. It was this vile wretch, who first caused to be written on the gate of the burying ground: "this is the place of everlasting sleep.—

Three weeks after this communication of the bishop of Moulin, Gobet, the new bi­shop of Paris, with his Grand-Vicars and three other revolutionary bishops, came to the hall of the legislators and there abdicated chris­tianity in form. They begged pardon of the injured nation for having so long kept them in the dark, by duping them into a belief of the divinity of an Impostor, whose religi­on they now threw off with abhorrence, re­solved in future to acknowledge no other deity than Reason alone!

It was not more than four days after this that a pagan festival was held in the Cathe­dral Church of Paris. A woman named Memoro, the wife of another man, but the [Page 224] strumpet of the vile Hebert, alias Father du Chêne, was dressed up as the goddess of Reason. Her throne was of green turf; an altar was erected at some distance, on which the priests burnt incense, while the legisla­tors and the brutified Parisian herd were prostrated before the throne of the goddess Reason, alias Memoro, alias du Chêne.

About this epoch appeared the paganish republican calendar, with a decree ordering its adoption. This was intended to root from the poor tyranized people the very memory of religion; to dry up the only source of comfort they had left. They had been robbed of all they possessed in this world, and their inexorable tyrants wished to rob them of every hope in the next. Some say that this calendar itself was com­posed by an apostate priest, others, that it was the work of a writer of farces, named Des Moulins. Whoever may be author, we know who has the honour of re-printing it and retailing it in this country.

It is true the last mentioned acts, the consummation of the most horrid blasphemy that ever man was witness of, took place under the Convention; but, what were they more than a necessary consequence of the measures of the Constituent Assembly? nay; the leaders in that Assembly boasted, [Page 225] when they had obtained the decree against the non-juring priests, that they had tricked the people out of their religion, before they perceived it. Nor is there at this time one of those who voted for that decree, who will not tell you, that christianity is a farce, fit only for the amusement of old folks, and that he rejoices in its abolition in France. This is not mere surmise.

Indeed, that their successors have only fulfilled their wishes, in this respect, there can be no doubt, if any judgment of the wishes of men is to be formed from their principles, their words and their actions. Who, I ask, that wished to preserve religion, would have passed a decree for the expulsion of every priest that refused to forswear him­self? who, that did not wish to destroy re­ligion, would have passed a decree for com­mitting it to the care of apostates? Was it not clear, that such men would stick at nothing? That, at the nod of their masters, they would at any time be ready to blas­pheme the God they pretended to adore? On the contrary, the Assembly knew, that there was no hope of their system taking root, while the ancient clergy remained in their cures. Among men, who gave up their all, and exposed themselves to almost certain death, rather than falsify their faith, they could not hope to find a Gobet. They [Page 226] could not hope to find supple villains that would voluntarily depose the emblems of their religion on the altar of a strumpet, and confess themselves to have been the crafty ministers of an arch impostor.—

The oath tendered to the clergy was the touch-stone; it was to prove them; to know whom the Assembly could depend on for the accomplishment of their projects, and whom they could not depend on. The enforcing of the oath was the last blow to public religion in France, and therefore the destruction of that religion, with all its im­moral and murderous consequences, is due to the Constituent Assembly, and to them alone. It is as nonsensical as unjust to ac­cuse this or that faction, or even the Con­vention itself, of exchanging Christianity for a system of paganism; infidels who adore an idol are as good as infidels who adore none; and where is the difference, whether the adored idol be Jean Jacques Rousseau or Madame Memoro? An adul­tress is as good a goddess as an adulterer is a god at any time.

Let the reader now look back, and he will easily trace all the horrors of the French Revolution to the decrees of the Constituent Assembly. It was they that rent the government to pieces; it was they that first broached the destructive doctrine [Page 227] of equality; it was they that destroyed all ideas of private property; and finally, it was they that rendered the people hardened, by effacing from their minds every principle of the only religion capable of keeping man­kind within the bounds of justice and hu­manity. Look also at their particular ac­tions, and you will see them breaking their oaths to their constituents and to their king; you will see their agents driving people from their estates, beating and killing them; you will see them surrounded with a set of hireling writers and assassins, employed to degrade and murder peaceable people at­tached to the religion of their forefathers; and you will see them not only pardoning murders, in spite of their poor humiliated monarch, but even receiving the assassins at their bar, covering them with applauses, and instituting festivals in their honour. What have the members of the Convention and their agents done more than this? They have murdered in greater numbers. True; but what have numbers to do with the matter? The principle on which those murders were committed was ever the same; it was more or less active as occasion requir­ed. The wants of the Convention were more pressing than those of the Constituent Assembly. The Assembly were not driven to the expedient of requisitions, nor was [Page 228] the hour yet arrived for the promulgation of the paganish calendar. Consequently they met with less opposition, and therefore less murders were necessary; but, had they continued their fittings to this day the de­vastation of every kind would have been the fame that it has been.

The whole history of the revolution pre­sents us with nothing but a regular progress in robbery and murder. The first Assem­bly, for instance, begin by flattering the mob, wheedling their king out of his title and his power; they then set him at defiance pro­scribe or put to death his friends; and then shut him up in his palace, as a wild beast in a cage. The second Assembly send a gang of ruffians to insult and revile him, and then they hurl him from his throne. The third Assembly cut his throat. What is there in all this but a regular and na­tural progression from bad to worse. And so with the rest of their abominable actions.

To throw the blame on the successors of the first despotic Assembly is such a perver­sion of reason, such an abandonment of truth, that no man, who has a single grain of sense, can hear of with patience. As well might we ascribe all the murders com­mitted at Nantz to the under cut-throats, by whom they were perpetrated, and not to the Convention by whose order, and un­der [Page 229] whose protection, these cut-throats acted. The Constituent Assembly knew the consequences of their decrees, as well as Foucault ( See page 66) knew the conse­quence of his order for throwing forty wo­men from the cliff Pierre-moine into the sea; and it is full as ridiculous to hear them pretend, that they did not wish those con­sequences to follow, as it would be to hear Foucault pretend, that he did not wish the forty women should be drowned. True, the Convention are guilty of every crime under heaven: assassins and blasphemers must ever merit detestation and abhorrence, from whatever motive they may act, or by whomsoever taught and instigated; but still the pre-eminence in infamy is due to their teachers and instigators: the Convention is, in relation to the Constituent Assembly, what the ignorant desperate bravo is in re­lation to his crafty and sculking employer.

Before I conclude, it may not be impro­per, as I have hitherto spoken of the Con­stituent Assembly in a general way, to make some distinctions with respect to the persons who composed it. I am very far from holding them all up as objects of ab­horrence, or even of censure. There were many, very many, men of great wisdom and virtue, who were elected to the Sates-General, and even who joined the Assem­bly, [Page 230] after it assumed the epithet National. It would be the height of injustice to re­proach these men with the consequences of measures, which they opposed with such uncommon eloquence and courage. Histo­ry will make honourable mention of their names, when the epitome I have here at­tempted will be lost and forgotten. Suffice it then to say, that the weight of our cen­sure, of the censure of all just and good men, ought to fall on those licentious poli­ticians and infidel philosophers alone, who sanctioned the decree for the annihilation of property and religion.

Here, too, we ought to divest ourselves of every thing of a personal or party na­ture, and direct our abhorrence to princi­ples alone. As to the actors, they have, in general, already expiated their wicked­ness or folly by the loss of their lives. We have seen the atheist Condorcet obliged to fly in disguise from the capital, the inhabi­tants of which he had corrupted, and by whom he had been adored as the great lu­minary of the age: we have seen him as­sume the garb and the supplicating tone of a common beggar, lurking in the lanes and woods, like a houseless thief, and, at last, literally dying in a ditch, leaving his car­case a prey to the fowls of the air, and his memory as a lesson to future apostles of [Page 231] anarchy and blasphemy. Scores, not to say hundreds, of his coadjutors have shared a fate little different from his own; and those who have not, can have little reason to congratu­late themselves on their escape. The tornado they had raised for the destruction of others, has swept them from the seat of their tyran­ny, and scattered them over every corner of the earth. Those haughty usurpers who refused the precedence to the successors of Charlemagne, are now obliged to yield it to a peasant or a porter. They who de­creed, that the "Folding-Doors of the Louvre should fly open at their approach," are now glad to lift the latch of a wicket, and bend their heads beneath the thatch of a cabin. And, what language can express the vexation, the anguish, the cutting re­flections, that must be the companions of their obscurity! When they look back on their distracted country, when they behold the widows, the orphans, the thousands and hundreds of thousands of murdered victims, that it presents; when they behold the frantic people, carrying the dagger to the hearts of their parents, nay, digging their forefathers from their graves, and throwing their ashes to the winds; when they behold all this, and reflect that it is the work of their own hands, well might [Page 232] they call on the hills to hide them. The torments of such an existence who can bear? Next to the wrath of heaven, the maledic­tion of one's country is surely the most tre­mendous and insupportable.

Now, what is the advantage we ought to derive from the awful example before us?—It ought to produce in us a watchful­ness, and a steady resolution to oppose the advances of disorganizing and infidel princi­ples. I am aware that it will be said by some, that all fear of the progress of these principles is imaginary; but, constant ob­servation assures me, that it is but too well founded. Let any man examine the change in political and religious opinions since the establishment of the general government, and particularly the change crept in along with our silly admiration of the French Revolution, and see if the result of his in­quiries, does not justify a fear of our falling under the scourge, that has brought a hap­py and gallant people on their knees, and left them bleeding at every pore.

Unfortunately for America, Great Bri­tain has thrown from her the principles of the French revolutionists with indignation and abhorrence. This, which one would [Page 233] imagine should have had little or no influ­ence on us, has served, in some measure, as a guide to our opinions, and has been one of the principal motives for our actions. A combination of circumstances, such as, perhaps, never before met together, has so soured the minds of the great mass of the people in this country, has worked up their hatred against Great Britain to such a pitch, that the instant that nation is named, they lose not only their temper but their reason also. The dictates of nature and the exercise of judgment are thrown aside: whatever the British adopt must be rejected, and whatever they reject must be adopted. Hence it is, that all the execrable acts of the French legislators, not forgetting their murders and their blasphemy, have met with the most unqualified applauses, merely because they were execrated in the island of Britain.

The word Republic has also done a great deal. France is a Republic, and the de­crees of the legislators were necessary to maintain it a Republic. This word out-weighs, in the estimation of some persons (I wish I could say they are few in number) all the horrors that have been, and that can be, committed in that country. One of these modern republicans will tell you that he does not deny, that hundreds of thou­sands of innocent persons have been mur­dered [Page 234] in France; that the people have nei­ther religion nor morals; that all the ties of nature are rent asunder; that the rising generation will be a race of cut-throats; that poverty and famine stalk forth at large; that the nation is half depopulated; that its riches along with millions of the best of the people are gone to enrich and aggrandize its enemies; that its commerce, its manufac­tures, its sciences, its arts, and its honour, are no more; but at the end of all this, he will tell you that it must be happy, because it is a Republic. I have heard more than one of these republican zealots declare, that he would sooner see the last of the French ex­terminated, than see them adopt any other form of government. Such a sentiment is characteristic of a mind locked up in savage ignorance; and I would no more trust my throat within the reach of such a republican, than I would within that of a Louvet a Gregoire, or any of their colleagues.

Our enlightened philosophers run on in a fine canting strain about the bigotry and ignorance of their ancestors; but, I would ask them, what more stupid doltish bigotry can there be, than to make the sound of a word the standard of good or bad govern­ment? what is there in the combination of the letters which make up the word Repub­lic; what is there in the sound they pro­duce, [Page 235] that the bellowing of it forth should compensate for the want of every virtue, and even for common sense and common ho­nesty? —It is synonymous with liberty.—Fatal error! In the mouth of a turbulent demagogue it is synonymous with liberty, and with every thing else, that will please his hearers; but, with the man of virtue and sense, it has no more than its literal value; that is, it mea [...] of itself, neither good nor evil. If we [...] our own government that of a [...] and judge of the meaning of the [...] the effects of that government, [...] [...] mit of a most amiable interpret [...] [...] if we are to judge of it by wh [...] [...] [...] duced in France, it means a [...] [...] [...] ous, tyrannical, blasphemous [...] [...] Last winter, one of these re [...] [...] in Congress, accused a [...] New England of having [...] [...] lican principles, becaus [...] [...] thing that seemed to [...] slavery! Thus, then, [...] mean liberty. In [...] thing: it is a watch w [...] [...] ever our happy and [...] Republic should be [...] done under the m [...] [...]

Let us, then, [...] look to the ch [...] [...] [Page 236] and not to their professions; let us attach ourselves to things and not to words; to sense and not to sound. Should the day of requisition and murder arrive, our tyrants calling themselves republicans will be but a poor consolation to us. The loss of pro­perty, the pressure of want, beggary, will not be less real because flowing from repub­ [...]an decrees. Hunger pinches the repub­ [...] the cold blast cramps his joints as [...] those of other men. This word [...] soften the pangs of death. The [...] [...]fe will not produce a delectable [...] because drawn across the throat [...] [...]lican; nor will the word repub­ [...] [...] bullet, or render a flaming [...] down. When Monsieur Ber­ [...] [...] [...]ghastly head of his father [...] [...]is lips, when his own heart [...] [...]rn from his living body, [...] [...]king and palpitating, on [...] [...]mmittee of magistrates, [...] [...]nd and of his mangled [...] [...]uaged by the shouts of [...] [...]ers.

[...] [...]ese things never can [...] Because we have [...] [...]aracter of a paci­ [...] [...] all we set danger [...] are not French­men, [Page 237] we are men as well as they, and con­sequently are liable to be misled, and even to be sunk to the lowest degree of brutali­ty as they have been. They, too, had an amiable character: what character have they now? The same principles brought into action among us would produce the same degradation. I repeat we are not what we were before the French Revoluti­on. Political projectors from every corner of Europe, troublers of society of every de­scription, from the whining philosophical hypocrite to the daring rebel and more dar­ing blasphemer, have taken shelter in these States. Will it be pretended that the prin­ciples and passions of these men have chang­ed with the change of air? it would be folly to suppose it.

Nor are men of the same stamp wanting among the native Americans. There is not a single action of the French revolutionists, but has been justified and applauded in our public papers, and many of them in our public assemblies. Anarchy has its open advocates. The divine author of our reli­gion has been put upon a level with the in­famous Marat. We have seen a clergyman of the episcopal church publicly abused, because he had recommended to his congre­gation to beware of the atheistical principles [Page 238] of the French. Even their calendar, the frivolous offspring of infidelity is proposed for our imitation. Where persons, whose livelihood depends on their daily publicati­ons, are to be found who are ever ready to publish articles of this nature, it were the grossest folly not to believe, that there are hundreds and thousands to whom they give pleasure. ^* But, we are not left to mere surmise here. How many numerous com­panies have issued, under the form of toasts, sentiments offensive to humanity and dis­graceful to our national character? We have seen the guillotine toasted to three times three cheers, and even under the dis­charge of cannon. If drunken men, as is usually the case, speak from the bottom of their hearts, what quarter should we have to expect from wretches like these. It must be allowed, too, that where the can­nons were fired to give eclat to such a sen­timent, [Page 239] that the convives were not of the most despicable class. And, what would the reader say, were I to tell him of a mem­ber of Congress, who wished to see one of those murderous machines, employed for lopping off the heads of the French, perma­nent in the State-House yard of the City of Philadelphia?

If these men of blood had succeeded in plunging us into a war; if they had once got the sword into their hands, they would have mowed us down like stubble. The word aristocrat would have been employed to as good account here, as ever it has been in France. We might 'ere this, have seen our places of worship turned into stables; we might have seen the banks of the Dela­ware, like those of the Loire, covered with human carcases, and its waters tinged with blood: 'ere this we might have seen our parents butchered, and even the head of our admired and beloved President rolling on a scaffold.

I know the reader will start back with horror. His heart will tell him, that it is impossible. But, once more, let him look at the example before us. The man who, in 1788, should have predicted the fate of the last humane and truly patriotic Louis, would have been treated as a wretch or a [Page 240] madman. The attacks on the character and conduct of the irreproachable Washing­ton, have been as bold, if not bolder, than those which led to the downfall of the un­fortunate French Monarch. His impudent and unprincipled enemies have represented him as cankered with every vice that mark a worthless tyrant; they have called him the betrayer of the liberties of his country, and have even drawn up and published ar­ticles of accusation against him! Can it, then, be imagined, that, had they posses­sed the power, they wanted the will to dip their hands in his blood? I am fully assured, that these wretches do not make a hundred thousandth part of the people of the Union: the name of Washington is as dear and dear­er, to all good men, than it ever was. But, of what consequence is their affection to him, of what avail to themselves, if they suffer him to be thus treated, without mak­ing one single effort to defeat the project of his infamous traducers? It is not for me to dictate the method of doing this; but sure I am, that had the friends of virtue and order shown only a hundredth part of the zeal in the cause of their own country, as the enemies of both have done in the cause of France, we should not now have to lament the existence of a hardened and [Page 241] impious faction, whose destructive principles, if not timely and firmly opposed, may one day render the annals of America as dis­graceful as those of the French Revolu­tion.