Page:Sunbeams extracted from cucumbers.djvu/24

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yet become Cosmopolites, need no proof. They have seen, and heard, and read these wild vagaries, and are therefore satisfied of their existence. As to the others, I have only to remark, that this same new machinery of the mind, by which certain things are believed, necessarily, and by the plain axiom, that action, and reaction, are equal, produces absolute incredulity, as to certain other things, and of course, no testimony will have any effect. Thus genuine Jacobins do not believe a word published in the Spectator, the Connecticut Journal, the Connecticut Courant, or the Centinel. They do not believe that France has any intention to destroy the government of this country—They do not believe that our Ministers at Paris were treated with any neglect, or contempt.—Indeed, some doubt whether Mr. Pinckney ever was in France. They do not believe that Italy, or Holland, or Germany, has ever been pillaged by the armies of the Republic, or that the path of those armies has been marked with any scenes of calamity and distress. In short, they do not believe but that the Directory, with their associates, are a benevolent society, established in that regenerated country, for the great purpose of propagating religion and good government through the world; and that their armies are their missionaries to effect these glorious objects.

And now, my Fellow-Citizens, let me ask, what effects have been produced by these theoretic, speculative, and delusive principles? France has made an experiment with them. Under pretence of making men perfect—of establishing perfect Liberty—perfect Equality—and an entirely new order of things, she has become one great Bedlam, in which some of the inhabitants are falling into the water, some into the fire, some biting and gnashing themselves with their teeth, and others beholding these acts, are chanting "Rights of Man! Ca-Ira!"