rted to
by all who wish for change.

Along with the moneyed interest, a new description of men had grown up,
with whom that interest soon formed a close and marked union: I mean the
political men of letters. Men of letters, fond of distinguishing
themselves, are rarely averse to innovation. Since the decline of the
life and greatness of Louis the Fourteenth, they were not so much
cultivated either by him, or by the Regent, or the successors to the
crown; nor were they engaged to the court by favors and emoluments so
systematically as during the splendid period of that ostentatious and
not impolitic reign. What they lost in the old court protection they
endeavored to make up by joining in a sort of incorporation of their
own; to which the two academies of France, and afterwards the vast
undertaking of the Encyclopaedia, carried on by a society of these
gentlemen, did not a little contribute.

The literary cabal had some years ago formed something like a regular
plan for the destruction of the Christian religion. This object they
pursued with a degree of zeal which hitherto had been discovered only in
the propagators of some system of piety. They were possessed with a
spirit of proselytism in the most fanatical degree,--and from thence, by
an easy progress, with the spirit of persecution according to their
means.[97] What was not to be done towards their great end by any direct
or immediate act might be wrought by a longer process through the medium
of opinion. To command that opinion, the first step is to establish a
dominion over those who direct it. They contrived to possess themselves,
with great method and perseverance, of all the avenues to literary fame.
Many of them, indeed, stood high in the ranks of literature and science.
The world had done them justice, and in favor of general talents forgave
the evil tendency of their peculiar principles. This was true
liberality; which they returned by endeavoring to confine the reputation
of sense, learning, and taste to themselves or their followers. I will
venture to say that this narrow, exclusive spirit has not been less
prejudicial to literature and to taste than to morals and true
philosophy. These atheistical fathers have a bigotry of their own; and
they have learnt to talk against monks with the spirit of a monk. But in
some things they are men of the world. The resources of intrigue are
called in to supply the defects of argument and wit. To this system of
litera