Nor was this fufficient. The groffness of the popular mind, on which political invective made but a faint impreffion, was to be roused into action by religious fanaticism, the moft intractable and domineering of all deftructive paffions. A clamor which had for half a century lain dormant was revived. The CHURCH was in danger! The spirit of persecution against an unpopular fect was artfully excited, and the friends of freedom, whom it might be odious and dangerous profeffedly to attack, were to be overwhelmed as Diffenters. That the majority of the advocates for the French Revolution were not fo, was, indeed, fufficiently known to their enemies. They were well known to be philofophers and friends of humanity, who were fuperior to the creed of any fect, and indifferent to the dogmas of any popular faith. But it fuited the purpose of their profligate adversaries to confound them with Diffenters, and to animate against them

the

the fury of prejudices which they themselves despised.

The diffusion of these invectives produced thofe obvious and inevitable effects, which it may require fomething more than candor to suppose not foreseen and defired. A banditti, who had been previously ftimulated, as they have fince been excufed and panegyrized by incendiary libellifts, wreaked their vengeance on a PHILOSOPHER, illuftrious by his talents and his writings, venerable for the spotlefs purity of his life, and amiable for the unoffending fimplicity of his manners. The exceffes of this mob of churchmen and loyalifis are to be poorly expiated by the few mifguided victims who are facrificed to the vengeance of the law.

We

are, however, only concerned in these facts, as they are evidence from our enemies of

the

the probable progrefs of freedom. The probability of that progrefs they all confpire to prove. The briefs of the Pope, and the pamphlets of Mr. BURKE*, the edicts of the

*The only thing that I recollect to have the air of argument in the two laft pamphlets of Mr. Burke is, the rea foning against the right of a majority to change a GovernWhatever be the plaufibility or dexterity of this reafoning, its originality will be beft eftimated by the following paffage of a PROFANE PHILOSOPHER!

ment.

"The controverfies that arife concerning the RIGHTS "of the PEOPLE proceed from the equivocation of the "word. The word PEOPLE has two fignifications. In one

fense it fignifieth a number of men diftinguished only by "the place of their habituation, as the people of England, "or the people of France, which is no more than the mul ❝titude of thofe particular perfons inhabiting these regions, "without confideration of any covenants or contracts be"tween them. In another sense it fignifieth a person civil, "either one man or one council, in the will whereof is "included and involved the will of every individual. Such "as do not distinguish between these two fenfes do usually "attribute such rights to a diffolved MULTITUDE as belong

only to the PEOPLE virtually contained in the body of the "Commonwealth or Sovereignty."

See HOBBES' Tripos, p. 170, et feq. edit. 12mo. Lond. 1684.

Spanish Court, and the mandates of the Spanish inquifition, the Birmingham rioters, and the Oxford graduates, equally render to Liberty the involuntary homage of their alarm.

FINI S.