stitution,
by putting a temporary negative on this decree, it is well known,
was one of the pretexts for dethroning him.

At the King's deposition this decree took place, and such of the
nonjuring priests as were not massacred in the prisons, or escaped the
search, were to be embarked for Guiana. The wiser and better part of
those whose compliances entitled them to remain, were, I believe, far
from considering this persecution of their opponents as a triumph--to
those who did, it was of short duration. The Convention, which had
hitherto attempted to disguise its hatred of the profession by censure
and abuse of a part of its members, began now to ridicule the profession
itself: some represented it as useless--others as pernicious and
irreconcileable with political freedom; and a discourse* was printed,
under the sanction of the Assembly, to prove, that the only feasible
republic must be supported by pure atheism.

* Extracts from the Report of Anacharsis Cloots, member of the
Committee of Public Instruction, printed by order of the National
Convention:

"Our _Sans-culottes_ want no other sermon but the rights of man, no
other doctrine but the constitutional precepts and practice, nor any
other church than where the section or the club hold their meetings,
&c.

"The propagation of the rights of man ought to be presented to the
astonished world pure and without stain. It is not by offering
strange gods to our neighbours that we shall operate their
conversion. We can never raise them from their abject state by
erecting one altar in opposition to another. A trifling heresy is
infinitely more revolting than having no religion at all. Nature,
like the sun, diffuses her light without the assistance of priests
and vestals. While we were constitutional heretics, we maintained
an army of an hundred thousand priests, who waged war equally with
the Pope and the disciples of Calvin. We crushed the old priesthood
by means of the new, and while we compelled every sect to contribute
to the payment of a pretended national religion, we became at once
the abhorrence of all the Catholics and Protestants in Europe. The
repulsion of our religious belief counteracted the attraction of our
political principles.--But truth is at length triumphant, and all
the ill-intentioned shall no more be able to detach our