* It is to be observed, that in these orations all the decrees passed by the Convention for the destruction of commerce and religion, are ascribed to the influence of Mr. Pitt.—­“La libertedes cultes existe en Turquie, elle n’existe point en France.  Le peuple y est prive d’un droit donc on jouit dans les etats despotiques memes, sous les regences de Maroc et d’Algers.  Si cet etat de choses doit perseverer, ne parlons plus de l’inquisition, nous en avons perdu le droit, car la liberte des cultes n’est que dans les decrets, et la persecution tiraille toute la France.

     “Cette impression intolerante aurait elle ete (suggeree) par le
     cabinet de St. James?”

“In Turkey the liberty of worship is admitted, though it does not exist in France.  Here the people are deprived of a right common to the most despotic governments, not even excepting those of Algiers and Morocco.—­If things are to continue in this state, let us say no more about the Inquisition, we have no right, for religious liberty is to be found only in our decrees, while, in truth, the whole country is exposed to persecution.

     “May not these intolerant notions have been suggested by the Cabinet
     of St. James?”

     Gregoire’s Report on the Liberty of Worship.

—­Thus, after so many years of suffering, and such a waste of whatever is most valuable, the civil, religious, and political privileges of this country depend on a vote of the Convention.

The speech of Gregoire, which tended to restore the Catholic worship, was very ill received by his colleagues, but every where else it is read with avidity and applause; for, exclusive of its merit as a composition, the subject is of general interest, and there are few who do not wish to have the present puerile imitations of Paganism replaced by Christianity.  The Assembly listened to this tolerating oration with impatience, passed to the order of the day, and called loudly for Decades, with celebrations in honour of “the liberty of the world, posterity, stoicism, the republic, and the hatred of tyrants!” But the people, who understand nothing of this new worship, languish after the saints of their ancestors, and think St. Francois d’Assise, or St. Francois de Sales, at least as likely to afford them spiritual consolation, as Carmagnoles, political homilies, or pasteboard goddesses of liberty.

The failure of Gregoire is far from operating as a discouragement to this mode of thinking; for such has been the intolerance of the last year, that his having even ventured to suggest a declaration in favour of free worship, is deemed a sort of triumph to the pious which has revived their hopes.  Nothing is talked of but the restoration of churches, and reinstalment of priests—­the shops are already open on the Decade, and the decrees of the Convention, which make a principal part of the republican service, are now read only to a few idle children or bare walls.