: A Residence in France During the Years 1792 1793 1794 and 1795 Part III. 1794 Described in a Series of Letters from an English Lady: with General and Incidental Remarks on the French Character and Manners by Biggs Charlotte Gifford John Editor - France Hi

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A RESIDENCE IN FRANCE, DURING THE YEARS 1792, 1793, 1794, AND 1795;

DESCRIBED IN A SERIES OF LETTERS FROM AN ENGLISH LADY; With General And Incidental Remarks On The French Character And Manners.

Second Edition.

London: Printed for T. N. Longman, Paternoster Row. 1797.

January 6, 1794.

If I had undertaken to follow the French revolution through all its absurdities and iniquities, my indolence would long since have taken the alarm, and I should have relinquished a task become too difficult and too laborious. Events are now too numerous and too complicated to be described by occasional remarks; and a narrator of no more pretensions than myself may be allowed to shrink from an abundance of matter which will hereafter perplex the choice and excite the wonder of the historian.--Removed from the great scene of intrigues, we are little acquainted with them--we begin to suffer almost before we begin to conjecture, and our solicitude to examine causes is lost in the rapidity with which we feel their effects.

Amidst the more mischievous changes of a philosophic revolution, you will have learned from the newspapers, that the French have adopted a new aera and a new calendar, the one dating from the foundation of their republic, and other descriptive of the climate of Paris, and the productions of the French territory. I doubt, however, if these new almanack-makers will create so much confusion as might be supposed, or as they may desire, for I do not find as yet that their system has made its way beyond the public offices, and the country people are particularly refractory, for they persist in holding their fairs, markets, &c. as usual, without any regard to the hallowed decade of their legislators. As it is to be presumed that the French do not wish to relinquish all commercial intercourse with other nations, they mean possibly to tack the republican calendar to the rights of man, and send their armies to propagate them together; otherwise the correspondence of a Frenchman will be as difficult to interpret with mercantile exactness as the characters of the Chinese.

--Yours.

January, 1794.

The total suppression of all religious worship in this country is an event of too singular and important a nature not to have been commented upon largely by the English papers; but, though I have little new to add on the subject, my own reflections have been too much occupied in consequence for me to pass it over in silence.

"Volumes have been written to determine whether or no a republic of Atheists could exist. I maintain that every other republic is a chimera. If you once admit the existence of a heavenly Sovereign, you introduce the wooden horse within your walls!--What you adore by day will be your destruction at night.

"A people of theists necessarily become revelationists, that is to say, slaves of priests, who are but religious go-betweens, and physicians of damned souls.

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