That it
professes contempt towards its object; and whilst it treats all religion
with scorn, is not so much as neutral about the modes: it unites the
opposite evils of intolerance and of indifference.
He could have proved that it is so far from rejecting tests, (as
unaccountably had been asserted,) that the Assembly had imposed tests of
a peculiar hardship, arising from a cruel and premeditated pecuniary
fraud: tests against old principles, sanctioned by the laws, and binding
upon the conscience.--That these tests were not imposed as titles to
some new honor or some new benefit, but to enable men to hold a poor
compensation for their legal estates, of which they had been unjustly
deprived; and as they had before been reduced from affluence to
indigence, so, on refusal to swear against their conscience, they are
now driven from indigence to famine, and treated with every possible
degree of outrage, insult, and inhumanity.--That these tests, which
their imposers well knew would not be taken, were intended for the very
purpose of cheating their miserable victims out of the compensation
which the tyrannic impostors of the Assembly had previously and
purposely rendered the public unable to pay.
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