CHAP. III.

There was (past all doubt) such a combination among the innumerable scribblers who supplied the fairs of Leipzig and Frankfort. Mirabeau calls it a Conjuration des Philosophes, an expression very clear to himself, for the myriads of gareteers who have long fed the craving mouth of Paris (always thirsting after some "new thing") called themselves philosophers, and, like the gangs of St. Giles's, conversed with each other in a cant of their own, full of morale, of energie, of bienvillance, &c. &c. &c. unintelligible or misunderstood by other men, and used for the purpose of deceit. While Mirabeau lived too, they formed a Conjuration. The 14th of July 1790, the most solemn invocation of the Divine presence ever made on the face of this earth, put an end to the propriety of this appellation; for it became necessary (in the progress of political Illumination) to declare that oaths were nonsense, because the invoked was a creature of the imagination, and the grand federation, like Wieshaupt and Bahrdt's Masonic Christianity, is declared, to those initiated into the higher mysteries, to be a lie. But if we have no longer a Conjuration des Philosophes, we have a gang of scribblers that has got possession of the public mind by their management of the literary Journals of Germany, and have made licentious sentiments in politics, in morals, and in religion, as familiar as were formerly the articles