Omniana/Volume 1/Statistics
128. Statistics.
We all remember Burke's curious assertion that there were 80,000 incorrigible jacobins in England. Mr. Colquhoun is equally precise in the number of beggars, prostitutes, and thieves in the city of London. Mercetinus, who wrote under Lewis the 15th, seems to have afforded the precedent; he assures his readers, that by an accurate calculation there were "50,000 incorrigible Atheists in the city of Paris!! Atheism then may have been a co-cause of the French revolution; but it should not be burthened on it, as its monster-child.