ntion to the rights of patrons, the Assembly has provided in future
an elective clergy: an arrangement which will drive out of the clerical
profession all men of sobriety, all who can pretend to independence in
their function or their conduct,--and which will throw the whole
direction of the public mind into the hands of a set of licentious,
bold, crafty, factious, flattering wretches, of such condition and such
habits of life as will make their contemptible pensions (in comparison
of which the stipend of an exciseman is lucrative and honorable) an
object of low and illiberal intrigue. Those officers whom they still
call bishops are to be elected to a provision comparatively mean,
through the same arts, (that is, electioneering arts,) by men of all
religious tenets that are known or can be invented. The new lawgivers
have not ascertained anything whatsoever concerning their
qualifications, relative either to doctrine or to morals, no more than
they have done with regard to the subordinate clergy; nor does it appear
but that both the higher and the lower may, at their discretion,
practise or preach any mode of religion or irreligion that they please.
I do not yet see what the jurisdiction of bishops over their
subordinates is to be, or whether they are to have any jurisdiction at
all.

In short, Sir, it seems to me that this new ecclesiastical establishment
is intended only to be temporary, and preparatory to the utter
abolition, under any of its forms, of the Christian religion, whenever
the minds of men are prepared for this last stroke against it by the
accomplishment of the plan for bringing its ministers into universal
contempt. They who will not believe that the philosophical fanatics who
guide in these matters have long entertained such a design are utterly
ignorant of their character and proceedings. These enthusiasts do not
scruple to avow their opinion, that a state can subsist without any
religion better than with one, and that they are able to supply the
place of any good which may be in it by a project of their own,--namely,
by a sort of education they have imagined, founded in a knowledge of the
physical wants of men, progressively carried to an enlightened
self-interest, which, when well understood, they tell us, will identify
with an interest more enlarged and public. The scheme of this education
has been long known. Of late they distinguish it (as they have got an
entirely new nomenclature of technical t