OF THE LATE PROFESSOR ROBISON. 527 



fiated invective. The facts themselves are altogether singular, 

 arguing a depravity quite unexampled in all the votaries of 

 illumination. From the perusal of the whole, it is impossible 

 not to conclude, that the alarm excited by the French Revolu- 

 tion, had produced in Mr Robison a degree of credulity which 

 was not natural to him. The suspicion with which he seems to 

 view every person on the continent, to whom the name of a Phi- 

 losopher can be applied, and the terms of reproach and con- 

 tempt to which, whether as individuals or as bodies, they are 

 always subjected, make it evident that the narrative is not im- 

 partial, and that the author w r as prepared, in certain cases, to * 

 admit the slightest presumption as clear and irrefragable evi- 

 dence. When, indeed, he speaks of such obscure men as com- 

 posed the greater part of the supposed conspirators, we have 

 no direct means of determining in what degree he has been 

 misled. But when we see the same sort of suspicion and 

 abuse directed against the best known and most justly celebra- 

 ted characters of the age, we cannot but lament the prejudices 

 which had taken possession of an understanding in other mat- 

 ters so acute and penetrating. 



Among the men engaged in public affairs, of whom Europe 

 boasted during the last century, there was perhaps none of a 

 higher character than Turgot, who, to the abilities of a states- 

 man, added the views of a philosopher ; was a man singularly 

 patriotic and disinterested, distinguished by the virtues both of 

 public and private life, and having, indeed, no fault but that 

 of being too good for the times in which he lived. Yet Mr 

 Robison has charged this upright and humane minister with 

 an exercise of power, which would argue the most extreme 

 depravity. He states *, that there existed in Paris a cora- 



3X2 bination 



* Proofs of a Conspiracy, 6,-c. 4th Edit. Note, p. 584. 



