We cannot be ignorant of the spirit of
atheistical fanaticism that is inspired by a multitude of writings
dispersed with incredible assiduity and expense, and by sermons
delivered in all the streets and places of public resort in Paris.
These writings and sermons have filled the populace with a black and
savage atrocity of mind, which supersedes in them the common
feelings of nature as well as all sentiments of morality and religion,
insomuch that these wretches are induced to bear with a sullen
patience the intolerable distresses brought upon them by the violent
convulsions and permutations that have been made in property.* The
spirit of proselytism attends this spirit of fanaticism. They have
societies to cabal and correspond at home and abroad for the
propagation of their tenets. The republic of Berne, one of the
happiest, the most prosperous, and the best governed countries upon
earth, is one of the great objects at the destruction of which they
aim. I am told they have in some measure succeeded in sowing there the
seeds of discontent. They are busy throughout Germany. Spain and Italy
have not been untried. England is not left out of the comprehensive
scheme of their malignant charity; and in England we find those who
stretch out their arms to them, who recommend their example from
more than one pulpit, and who choose in more than one periodical
meeting publicly to correspond with them, to applaud them, and to hold
them up as objects for imitation; who receive from them tokens of
confraternity, and standards consecrated amidst their rites and
mysteries;*(2) who suggest to them leagues of perpetual amity, at
the very time when the power to which our constitution has exclusively
delegated the federative capacity of this kingdom may find it
expedient to make war upon them.
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