is abandoned.  We cannot, if we would, delude ourselves about the true state of this dreadful contest. It is a religious war.  It includes in its object, undoubtedly, every other interest of society as well as this; but this is the principal and leading feature.  It is through this destruction of religion that our enemies propose the accomplishment of all their other views.  The French Revolution, impious at once and fanatical, had no other plan for domestic power and foreign empire.  Look at all the proceedings of the National Assembly, from the first day of declaring itself such, in the year 1789, to this very hour, and you will find full half of their business to be directly on this subject.  In fact, it is the spirit of the whole.  The religious system, called the Constitutional Church, was, on the face of the whole proceeding, set up only as a mere temporary amusement to the people, and so constantly stated in all their conversations, till the time should come when they might with safety cast off the very appearance of all religion whatsoever, and persecute Christianity throughout Europe with fire and sword.  The Constitutional clergy are not the ministers of any religion:  they are the agents and instruments of this horrible conspiracy against all morals.  It was from a sense of this, that, in the English addition to the articles proposed at St. Domingo, tolerating all religions, we very wisely refused to suffer that kind of traitors and buffoons.

This religious war is not a controversy between sect and sect, as formerly, but a war against all sects and all religions.  The question is not, whether you are to overturn the Catholic, to set up the Protestant.  Such an idea, in the present state of the world, is too contemptible.  Our business is, to leave to the schools the discussion of the controverted points, abating as much as we can the acrimony of disputants on all sides.  It is for Christian statesmen, as the world is now circumstanced, to secure their common basis, and not to risk the subversion of the whole fabric by pursuing these distinctions with an ill-timed zeal.  We have in the present grand alliance all modes of government, as well as all modes of religion.  In government, we mean to restore that which, notwithstanding our diversity of forms, we are all agreed in as fundamental in government.  The same principle ought to guide us in the religious part:  conforming the mode, not to our particular ideas, (for in that point we have no ideas in common,) but to what will best promote the great, general ends of the alliance.  As statesmen, we are to see which of those modes best suits with the interests of such a commonwealth as we wish to secure and promote.  There can be no doubt but that the Catholic religion, which is fundamentally the religion of France, must go with the monarchy of France.  We know that the monarchy did not survive the hierarchy, no, not even in appearance, for many months,—­in substance, not for a single hour.  As little can it exist in future, if that pillar is taken away, or even shattered and impaired.