undamentally wrong as to be utterly incapable of
correcting itself by any length of time, or of being formed into any
mode of polity of which a member of the House of Commons could publicly
declare his approbation.

If it had been permitted to Mr. Burke, he would have shown distinctly,
and in detail, that what the Assembly calling itself National had held
out as a large and liberal toleration is in reality a cruel and
insidious religious persecution, infinitely more bitter than any which
had been heard of within this century.--That it had a feature in it
worse than the old persecutions.--That the old persecutors acted, or
pretended to act, from zeal towards some system of piety and virtue:
they gave strong preferences to their own; and if they drove people from
one religion, they provided for them another, in which men might take
refuge and expect consolation.--That their new persecution is not
against a variety in conscience, but against all conscience. That it
professes contempt towards its object; and whilst it treats all religion
with scorn, is not so much as neutral about the modes: it unites the
opposite evils of intolerance and of indifference.

He could have proved that it is so far from rejecting tests, (as
unaccountably had been asserted,) that the Assembly had imposed tests of
a peculiar hardship, arising from a cruel and premeditated pecuniary
fraud: tests against old principles, sanctioned by the laws, and binding
upon the conscience.--That these tests were not imposed as titles to
some new honor or some new benefit, but to enable men to hold a poor
compensation for their legal estates, of which they had been unjustly
deprived; and as they had before been reduced from affluence to
indigence, so, on refusal to swear against their conscience, they are
now driven from indigence to famine, and treated with every possible
degree of outrage, insult, and inhumanity.--That these tests, which
their imposers well knew would not be taken, were intended for the very
purpose of cheating their miserable victims out of the compensation
which the tyrannic impostors of the Assembly had previously and
purposely rendered the public unable to pay. That thus their ultimate
violence arose from their original fraud.

He would have shown that the universal peace and concord amongst
nations, which these common enemies to mankind had held out with the
same fraudulent ends and pretences with which they had uniformly
conducted ever