Gazette Of The United States, & Philadelphia Daily Advertiser

BOSTON, July 1.

NEW YORK.

The most successful attack that has been made upon the tyrannical and impious desperadoes who have lately governed France, and who had laid the plan for eradicating Christianity from Europe, and undoubtedly from the face of the earth, is about to make its appearance in this country, in a small publication from the celebrated La Harpe. The systematic conspiracy of the sect of philosophers, so called, against Christianity, as delineated by the iron pen of M. De la Harpe is almost too infamous to be credited, and it requires all the reputation of the author, who was an eye witness to and a sufferer in all the scenes which he describes, to gain our belief.

As it respects America, this work will prove beyond contradiction, to any man who is not blinded by prejudice (and the 10,000 copies of Paine's Age of Reason, sent to Philadelphia to be distributed gratis, does not invalidate this conclusion) that this plan extended to nothing short of a thorough regeneration. The good men of America, therefore, clergy and others who, by a timely and superior discernment, unmindful of popular clamours, combined early in defence of their country, will have abundant cause to rejoice; and this triumph is well worthy their noble and courageous exertions, when they find, by this work, a confirmation of the opinion, that their virtuous league has frustrated the plan, whose object was, first to destroy the morals of the people, and afterwards the Christian religion on which it is founded.

The following apostrophe to the philosophers of the eighteenth century, as a defence of the victims of the revolution, may be considered as a specimen of the author's mode of reasoning.

"With proofs in hand, I affirm, that ever since the beginning of the persecution, ordered against the priests, men of property and virtue, among that multitude of victims delivered up to death, or chains, out of that vast number of martyrs, either captive or proscribed, there is not one single individual that has been legally convicted of the least plot, of the least attempt against government, there is not one individual, against whom proved or even known facts were ever articulated. You never accused them but in vague and general terms, which were of course false and calumnious; you always condemned the person, and never the act; in a word, you always proscribed en masse by revolutionary denominations, which were enchantments of death; nay this was not only the system of Robespierre, as you wished to make us believe, since that villain is no more: it was that of the whole ruling faction, and it is still the system, of the present day, with more or less modification. As a proof of this, I will mention the abominable law of the 22d Brumaire, and, so many others, hitherto unrepealed. Now, as you have never been able to specify any thing against any one, whom you have murdered, is it not a demonstration of your inability, not only to articulate real facts, but even to find out appearances, specious enough to authorize personal accusation? You could however dispense with these, for revolutionary qualifications have ever been sufficient to do all the mischief which was wanted. I have therefore a right to conclude that the man who never could be accused of a fact by enemies who have power to do every thing, and who blush at nothing, is certainly innocent."