To speak seriously, and without circumlocution, it is time that the laws should lend reason their aid for the annihilation of that party-spirit, which has so long disturbed the kingdom with ridiculous controversies; controversies, we are not afraid to assert it, more fatal to the state than infidelity itself, when it seeks not to make proselytes. A great prince, it is said, reproached one of his officers with being a Jansenist or Molinist, I know not which: they told him he was mistaken, for that the officer was an Atheist: “If he be only an Atheist,” replied the prince, “that is another affair, and I have nothing to say to it.” This answer, which some have wanted to turn into ridicule, was however extremely wise: the prince, as head of the state, has nothing to fear from an Atheist, who is silent, and dogmatizes not. Such a wretch, while extremely culpable in the eyes of God and of reason, is hurtful only to himself, and not to others: the party-man, the disputant, disturbs society by his idle controversies. In this case that law of Solon prevails not, by which all who took not some side in the troubles of the state were declared infamous. That great legislator was too knowing to rank in this number the controversies concerning religion, so ill calculated to interest good subjects; he would rather have made it an honour to shun and to despise them. Our gloomy theological quarrels confine not to the limits of the kingdom the injury and hurt they do us: they debase, in the eyes of Europe, our nation, already too much humiliated by her misfortunes: they make strangers, and even the Italians, say, “that the French know not how to be warm, excepting for billets of confession, or for buffoons, for the bull Unigenitus, or for the comick opera[20].” Such is the very unjust idea which a handfull of fanaticks give to all Europe of the French nation, at a time nevertheless when the truely estimable part of that nation are more enlightened than ever, more taken up about useful objects, and fuller of contempt for the follies and the men that disgrace it.