The French, who are obliged to celebrate so many aeras of revolution, who have demolished Bastilles and destroyed tyrants, seem at this moment to be in a political infancy, struggling against despotism, and emerging from ignorance and barbarity.  A person unacquainted with the promoters and objects of the revolution, might be apt to enquire for what it had been undertaken, or what had been gained by it, when all the manufactured eloquence of Tallien is vainly exerted to obtain some limitation of arbitrary imprisonment—­when Freron harangues with equal labour and as little success in behalf of the liberty of the press; while Gregoire pleads for freedom of worship, Echasseriaux for that of commerce, and all the sections of Paris for that of election.*

* It is to be observed, that in these orations all the decrees passed by the Convention for the destruction of commerce and religion, are ascribed to the influence of Mr. Pitt.—­“La libertedes cultes existe en Turquie, elle n’existe point en France.  Le peuple y est prive d’un droit donc on jouit dans les etats despotiques memes, sous les regences de Maroc et d’Algers.  Si cet etat de choses doit perseverer, ne parlons plus de l’inquisition, nous en avons perdu le droit, car la liberte des cultes n’est que dans les decrets, et la persecution tiraille toute la France.

     “Cette impression intolerante aurait elle ete (suggeree) par le
     cabinet de St. James?”

“In Turkey the liberty of worship is admitted, though it does not exist in France.  Here the people are deprived of a right common to the most despotic governments, not even excepting those of Algiers and Morocco.—­If things are to continue in this state, let us say no more about the Inquisition, we have no right, for religious liberty is to be found only in our decrees, while, in truth, the whole country is exposed to persecution.

     “May not these intolerant notions have been suggested by the Cabinet
     of St. James?”

     Gregoire’s Report on the Liberty of Worship.

—­Thus, after so many years of suffering, and such a waste of whatever is most valuable, the civil, religious, and political privileges of this country depend on a vote of the Convention.

The speech of Gregoire, which tended to restore the Catholic worship, was very ill received by his colleagues, but every where else it is read with avidity and applause; for, exclusive of its merit as a composition, the subject is of general interest, and there are few who do not wish to have the present puerile imitations of Paganism replaced by Christianity.  The Assembly listened to this tolerating oration with impatience, passed to the order of the day, and called loudly for Decades, with celebrations in honour of “the liberty of the world, posterity, stoicism, the republic, and the hatred of tyrants!” But the people, who understand nothing of this new worship, languish after the saints of their ancestors, and think St. Francois d’Assise, or St. Francois de Sales, at least as likely to afford them spiritual consolation, as Carmagnoles, political homilies, or pasteboard goddesses of liberty.