sance those metals are still suffered to remain in the hands of suspected persons. Let us degrade and vilify gold and silver; let us drag those deities of monarchy in the dirt, and establish the worship of the austere virtues of a republick." He however adds, "I send. you seventeen chests filled with gold, silver, and plate, of all sorts, the spoil of churches and castles, You will see with peculiar pleasure two beautiful croziers, and a ducal coronet of silver gilt."

This ingenious idea of vilifying and degrading valuable effects by seizing them for the use of the revolutionary government, is not lost upon the French minister of finance. A few days after the receipt of this letter, a citizen appears at the bar, and desires to be permitted to exchange certain pieces of gold and silver bearing the image of the tyrant for republican paper. This patriotick and disinterested offer, as you may imagine, was gladly accepted by the convention: but upon a motion being made, that honourable mention of this transaction should be inserted in the votes, the chancellor of the exchequer rises with the utmost indignation to oppose so monstrous a proposition; he delivers a most eloquent and vehement invective against gold and silver; he says, "In a short time the world will be too happy if we should deign to receive pieces of metal bearing the effigy of tyrants in exchange for republican assignats; already the whole nation rejects and despises those corrupting metals, which tyrants originally brought from America for the sole purpose of enslaving us. I have in contemplation the plan of a sumptuary law, by which I will drive that vile dung once more into the bowels of the earth."

What was the sumptuary law by which the chancellor of the exchequer proposed to accomplish this salutary reform? Here is that excellent law. "All gold and silver metal, in specie or plate, all jewels, gold and silver lace, or valuable effects which shall be discovered buried in the earth, or concealed in cellars, walls, rubbish, floors, or pavements, hearths, or chimnies, or in any secret place, shall be seized and con

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fiscated for the use of the republick; and the informer shall receive a twentieth part of the value of whatever he shall discover, to be paid in assignats." Concealment alone is the crime on which this law attaches, without even any of the ordinary pretences of aristocracy or disaffection. In consequence of this decree, every place in which it was possible to conceal treasure is searched with the utmost rigour; the privacy of every house is violated; every cellar and garden is dug up; and the chancellor of the exchequer with the most unrelenting spirit of persecution pursues the objects of his hatred and contempt even to the bowels of the earth, where he had threatened to drive them.

About the same time a law was passed appointing commissioners for receiving, on behalf of the nation, the gold and silver plate, and every other valuable article which had been consecrated to the use of religious worship in any part of the country. This leads me to a most distinguished feature of the revolutionary government: I mean the formal abolition of religion. It may appear extraordinary that I should introduce in this part of the argument a subject which from its serious and awful nature might seem to demand a separate and distinct consideration. But in order to show the system which I am describing in its true colours, I am compelled even in the distribution of this detail to follow the course of the extravagant follies, and of the eccentrick crimes which distinguish the revolutionary government, not more by their absurdity and magnitude, than by their novelty and singularity. For this reason I must class the abolition of religion under the head of revenue. The main object of this measure was certainly to obtain a new resource by seizing the salaries of the clergy, and by plundering the ornaments of the churches. There was however another collateral object inseparably connected with the first, namely, to strengthen the foundations of the revolutionary government, and to reconcile the minds of the people to the crimes of their tyrants by destroying the first elements of all

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moral principle, by dissolving the firmest bond of civil society, and by subverting the strongest bulwark of lawful authority.

The plan for the accomplishment of these combined objects was deliberate and systematick, and pursued from beginning to end with the utmost regularity, consistency, and vigour. The groundwork of this scheme had indeed been long laid; it may be traced in the seizure of the church lands, in the oath exacted from the clergy by the civil constitution of 1792, and in the persecution and massacre of those who had the virtue and courage to reject that oath, and to sacrifice their fortunes, and expose their lives, for the sake of the established religion. The fury of that persecution had been nearly exhausted before the 31st of May, and the revolutionary government found no priests in possession of salaries from the state, but those who had submitted to the constitutional oath. The first step taken was, to reduce the salaries of the priests to an allowance scarcely sufficient for their subsistence. Soon after, all disguise was thrown off, and the convention on the one hand excited the people by a publick address to despise their clergy as a useless and unnecessary burthen, and on the other openly proposed rewards to such priests as should voluntarily renounce not their salaries only, but the duties of their sacred office. The commissioners in the several departments received instructions to enlighten the publick mind, and to encourage the abdication of the clergy. Some extracts from the addresses of the clergy, and from the letters of the national commissioners will best explain true spirit of those proceedings. An address, dated the 30th of October from the curate of Villos du Luchon, says, "Legislators, I come to make a publick confession, and to declare my repentance. Why should we spare established prejudices? For my part, I believe that no religion in any country in the world is founded in truth. I believe that all the various religions in the world are descended from the same parents. They are all the daughters of pride and ignorance. I

believe that heaven is nothing more than the happiness which attends virtue on earth. I render this solemn homage to truth. Universal morality is become my gospel; and henceforth I mean to draw my texts from thence alone, and to preach in no other cause than that of liberty and of my country. Fanaticism will not now listen to me; but by habits of truth men will be converted to reason; and we may hope that soon priests of all religions will comprehend the triumph of philosophy and of the liberty of nations, and acknowledge the difference between the functions of the priesthood, and the duties of honesty and virtue." Upon receiving this address, the convention decrees, "that all similar addresses of renunciation of the ecclesiastical character, and of the functions relating to it, shall be lodged with the committee of publick instruction, which is ordered to take effectual measures for rendering all such publick acts useful to the history of the revolution, and to the publick education." This proceeding does not satisfy the eagerness of Thuriot. He observes, that " he has no doubt that the new creed will soon efface all memory of the old." But in order that truth may be carried into every part of the republick with more promptitude and effect, he moves, " that all similar letters should be translated into all the provincial idioms." Not satisfied even with the hope of propagating these liberal doctrines in the provinces, he carries his benevolence beyond the limits of France. He says, " It is not sufficient to enlighten one part of Europe: this is a case in which it may be right to soften the rigour of the French laws respecting foreigners. It should be the duty of the convention to assume the honourable office of diffusing truth over the whole earth." And upon his motion it is decreed, "that all renunciations of the functions of religion shall be translated into all foreign languages." In the same month the archbishop of Paris enters the convention, accompanied by a solemn procession of his vicars, and by several curates of Paris; he makes a speech, in which he renounces the priesthood in his own name, and in the name of all his attendants; and he declares, that he does it, "because he is convinced that no national worship should be tolerated, excepting the worship of liberty and equality." The votes of the convention mention, that the archbishop and his curates were received and embraced with transport by the whole convention; and that the archbishop was solemnly presented with a red cap. Before he left the convention, several members who were clergymen imitated his example by adopting his creed. The day concludes with a speech from Julien of Toulouse, a member of the convention, and a minister of the protestant church. He says, "For twenty years I have exercised the functions of a protestant minister. I declare that I renounce them for ever. In every religion there is more or less of quackery (great applauses.) It is glorious to be able to make this declaration under the auspices of reason, of philosophy, and of that sublime constitution which has already overturned the errours of superstition and monarchy in France, and which now prepares a similar fate for all foreign tyrannies. I declare that I will no longer enter into any other temple than the sanctuary of the laws; that I will acknowledge no other god than liberty, no other worship than that of my country, no other gospel than the republican constitution: such is my profession of moral and political faith. I shall cease to be a minister of the protestant church; but I shall think myself equally bound to advise, exhort, and instruct my fellowcitizens in the jacobin clubs, and in the publick squares; there I will preach, and there I will inspire them with the love of liberty and equality. I will soon lay upon the table my letters of ordination, of which I hope you will have the kindness to make an auto da fe." The letters of the national commissioners are full of the same zeal: Lequinio and Laignelot, deputies of the convention, write to that assembly, from Rochefort on the 2d of same month, in these words: "We pass from miracle to miracle: soon our only regret will be that no more miracles