that their hatred was confined. Even Jews were involved in this comprehensive plan; their ornaments of publick worship were plundered, and their vows of irreligion recorded with enthusiasm. The rigour of the laws respecting foreigners was relaxed, in order that impiety might be universally propagated for the general benefit of all mankind. The existence of a future state was openly denied, and modes of burial devised for the express purpose of representing to the minds of the people, that death was nothing more than an everlasting sleep; and to complete the whole project, doctrines were publickly circulated under the eye of the government, maintaining that the existence of a supreme God was an idea inconsistent with the liberty of man. And yet a noble earl* in this debate has lamented, that the French government should have met with any interruption in their laudable efforts for the destruction of despotism and superstition! I trust those expressions were inconsiderately used. We are not yet sufficiently enlightened in this house to consider an attack against Christianity, and even against the belief and worship of a God, as a laudable effort to destroy superstition. So very little has the noble earl examined this subject, that the most striking feature of this whole system has entirely escaped his observation. It is a circumstance well deserving of attention, that as the anarchy which prevails in France is accompanied by all the evils of despotism, so their atheism bears all the most odious features of superstition. Their enthusiastick worship of those abstract ideas of liberty and equality which they have substituted in the place of God, their bigoted infidelity, their intolerant zeal for the propagation of atheism, and their furious spirit of persecution against every mode of religious worship have not been surpassed, and have seldom been equalled in the most sanguinary periods in which misguided and fanatical superstition has ever disgraced the cause of religion.

But since the noble earl has, it seems, connected these impious proceedings with certain political prin

* Lord Wycombe.

ciples, I beg his attention to what I shall now offer on that subject, with the view of showing to the house the intimate alliance between all the parts of the French system, and the various modes in which they all mutually aid and cooperate with each other.

The abbè Sieyes, the author of the original declaration of rights, and one of the committee for framing the constitution of the 10th of August, 1793, in making his solemn abjuration of religion, explains to the convention the cause and the progress of his conversion. He says, 66 my wishes have long desired this triumph of reason over superstition. I repeat now what I have always felt, and often declared, that I know no other worship than that of liberty and equality, no other religion than the love of humanity, and of my country. When the vigour of my understanding first cast off the melancholy prejudices by which my youth had been afflicted, at that moment the energy of insurrection entered into my heart. If since that time I have submitted to bear the chains of the church, it has been under the pressure of the same force which equally subjected all free spirits to the chains of the monarchy. The day of the revolution necessarily dissolved all those odious bonds."

In one and the same moment the mind of this great man was touched by the benignant influence of atheism and by the sacred spirit of insurrection, and was at once miraculously relieved from all sense of civil obedience to his king, and of religious duty to his God. Never was so comprehensive a system unfolded to the world by an exposition so clear, so unequivocal, and so compendious. The noble earl and the house may learn from these few words, whether it was superstition or religion, despotism or monarchy, against which the violence of the jacobin faction was levelled, and why they thought atheism the most secure foundation on which a revolutionary government could be established.

Such were the proceedings by which the abolition of religion was attempted in France; but for the honour of human nature, they did not answer the

expectations of those who had digested the plan, and had been most active in providing the means for its execution. Disciplined in crimes, and accustomed to every scene of rapine, injustice, and cruelty, the people of France could not yet be induced to renounce for ever the consolations of religion. The provinces almost without exception were scandalized at the audacious profligacy of the government, and even at Paris the strongest symptoms of the same sentiment appeared. Robespierre himself was alarmed; and the jacobin club thought it prudent to declare, that under all the existing circumstances they admitted the idea of a God. Apprehensions were entertained that the salutary movement of terrour might take a new direction, and that the order of the day might be enforced against the government itself. At length, amidst the discontents of the people, who claimed aloud the free exercise of religious worship guarantied to them by the constitution, after many struggles and many unsuccessful evasions, slow, and reluctant, and ambiguous, forth comes the repentance of the convention! Even in their repentance they still betray their affection for their crime, and their eager hope of renewing it under more propitious circumstances. They are compelled to tolerate religious worship, and to forbid the repetition of those violences, which had been exercised to crush it in every part of the country; but in the same decree they declare, that they do not mean "to furnish a pretext for the disturbance of patriots, or to check the aspiring flight of the publick mind; they invite citizens to abstain from all religious discussions, and to employ themselves wholly in the contemplation of the good of their country." Upon farther reflection they add, "that they do not mean to disapprove of the measures taken by their commissioners in the several departments, to aid the people in the destruction of fanaticism." This last resolution sanctions the imprisonment and proscription of the clergy, the shutting up and subsequent profanation of churches of all religions, the arts and menaces employed to induce

catholicks and protestants to abjure christianity, the establisment of new forms of burial, in which the existence of a future state is solemnly denied, and all the acts of oppression and impiety which I have detailed to the house. Thus their very repentance furnishes the most incontestable proof of the real scope of their original design, of the extent to which it had been carried in practice, and of their future intentions, if by time and assiduity they shall be able to eradicate from the publick mind that natural instinct which proved an insuperable obstacle to the success of their first attempt. Having thus endeavoured to justify themselves in the eyes of France, they felt that a government, which openly overturned the fundamental principles of all religion, must become an object of alarm and abhorrence to every foreign nation. Their next step therefore was to endeavour to vindicate their conduct to all Europe; and with that view Robespierre drew up an answer (as he styles it,) to the manifestoes of all kings, in which he refutes in the most triumphant manner the charge of irreligion which had been alleged against the revolutionary government. He says, He says, "We are accused of " having “ declared war against heaven itself. But what people ever offered a more pure worship to a Supreme Being? The death-warrant of tyrants lay dormant and forgotten in the timid breasts of men; we called it forth; we executed it. To punish kings is to honour God." Here, then, is their creed publickly proclaimed in the face of all Europe. In the murder of their innocent king is comprised the whole principle and practice of their religion, their sole profession of faith, and their established mode of worship: a profession of faith, and a mode of worship worthy only of those who have placed the bust of Marat on the altar of God!

To return to the observations which have led me to this digression, I must remark, that while the detestable project of abolishing religion has failed of its proposed effect upon the minds of the people, it does not appear to have been much more successful as a

measure of revenue; there is every reason to believe that it has not been productive of any considerable resource. Although the churches were plundered of all the articles of value which could be found in them, yet, when it is recollected that many of the richest ornaments of the churches had been sent into the publick treasury previous to the 10th of August 1792, under the name of patriotick gifts, a large deduction must be made from what might have been supposed to be the amount of this resource. In addition to this circumstance Cambon states, that little or none of the church plate had reached the publick treasury, having been pillaged by those whose zeal had been the most forward in promoting the worship of reason, truth, probity, and the nation. In all probability, the principal financial advantage of this measure is to be found in the reduction of the salaries of the clergy.

I will now recapitulate the leading branches of the revenue of the revolutionary government for the present year. The tax upon all yearly income below the value of four hundred pounds, and the seizure of all yearly income above that sum, including a tax upon the funds, upon commercial capital of every description, upon private debts, and upon all money not laid out at interest; arbitrary local loans levied upon the egotism of property, and the malevolence of wealth. Taxes raised by incompetent authority. The confiscation of all concealed property, and the abolition of religion. To this list might be added the revenue arising from their system of criminal justice, from their violations of personal freedom, and collaterally, from their regulations for the destruction of agriculture and commerce, and for the maintenance of their army: these will be more properly considered under their distinct heads. Various accounts have been given of the sum in specie brought into the treasury by these exactions. It has been asserted to be fifteen millions sterling. Even admitting the truth of such a rumour, when we compare this sum with a monthly expenditure of eighteen mil