is the greatest and most enormous a subject can
perpetrate; but what epithet can there be given to him who, to preserve
an authority unlawfully acquired, asssociates in his guilt a Supreme
Pontiff, whom the multitude is accustomed to reverence as the
representative of their God, but who, by this act of scandal and
sacrilege, descends to a level with the most culpable of men? I have
heard, not only in this city but in villages, where sincerity is more
frequent than corruption, and where hypocrites are as little known as
infidels, these remarks made by the people:

"Can the real vicar of Christ, by his inauguration, commit the double
injustice of depriving the legitimate owner of his rights, and of
bestowing as a sacred donation what belongs to another; and what he has
no power, no authority, to dispose of? Can Pius VII. confer on Napoleon
the First what belongs to Louis XVIII.? Would Jesus Christ, if upon
earth, have acted thus? Would his immediate successors, the Apostles,
not have preferred the suffering of martyrdom to the commission of any
injury? If the present Roman pontiff acts differently from what his
Master and predecessors would have done, can he be the vicar of our
Saviour?"

These and many similar reflections the common people have made, and make
yet. The step from doubt to disbelief is but short, and those brought up
in the Roman Catholic religion, who hesitate about believing Pius VII. to
be the vicar of Christ, will soon remember the precepts of atheists and
freethinkers, and believe that Christ is not the Son of God, and that God
is only the invention of fear.

The fact is, that by the Pope's performance of the coronation of an
Emperor of the French, a religious as well as a political revolution was
effected; and the usurper in power, whatever his creed may be, will
hereafter, without much difficulty, force it on his slaves. You may,
perhaps, object that Pius VII., in his official account to the Sacred
College of his journey to France, speaks with enthusiasm of the
Catholicism of the French people. But did not the Goddess of Reason, did
not Robespierre as a high priest of a Supreme Being, speak as highly of
their sectaries? Read the Moniteur of 1793 and 1794, and you will be
convinced of the truth of this assertion. They, like the Pope, spoke of
what they saw, and they, like him, did not see an individual who was not
instructed how to perform his part, so as to give satisfaction to him
whom he was to