GENERAL HISTORY. 



[19 



^ent distress, have been led to 

 listen to plausible and confident 

 demagogues, in the expectation of 

 immediate relief. It is to be 

 hoped, that many of those who 

 have engaged, to a cerlain extent, 

 in the projects of the disatfected, 

 but in whom the principles of 

 moral and religious duty have not 

 been extinguished or perverted by 

 the most profane and miserable 

 sophistry, would withdraw them- 

 selves before those projects were 

 pushed to actiial insurrection. 



But, with all these allowances, 

 your committee cannot contem- 

 plate the activity and arts of the 

 leaders in this conspiracy, and the 

 numbers whom they have already 



seduced, and may seduce ; the 

 oaths by which many of them are 

 bound together ; the means sug- 

 gested and prepared for the forci- 

 ble attainment of tiieir objects j 

 the nature of the objects them- 

 selves, which are not orily the 

 overthrow of all the political in- 

 stitutions of the kingdom, but also 

 suL-li a subversion of the rights 

 and principles of property, as must 

 necessarily lead to general con- 

 fusion, plunder, and bloodshed ; 

 without submitting, to the most se- 

 rious attention of the House, the 

 dangers which exist, and which the 

 utmost vigilance of government, 

 under the existing laws, has been 

 found inadequate to prevent. 



[C2] 



CHAP- 



