This sermon is worthy the attention of every inhabitant in the United States on every account, as it contains an authentic letter from the Grand Lodge of Illuminated Free Masons in France, to the Grand Lodge of the Illuminated Free Masons in the United States, together with a list of about one hundred members—their names—birthplace—age—places of residence, and occupation. Every person who does not wish to be blind to his own destruction, will undoubtedly furnish himself with this document; since it establishes beyond a doubt the existence of that infernal club in the very heart of our country.[815] A larger measure of support of Morse and his cause came from the public declaimers, who, on the occasion of the Fourth of July following, regaled their audiences with discursive observations on the state of national affairs. All over New England citizens were solemnly urged to take serious account of the conspiracy that recently had been partially dragged into the light. At Ridgefield, Connecticut, the declaration was made that America had been caught in the meshes of the net which the Illuminati had attempted to cast over all the nations.[816] At New Haven it was asserted that the societies of Illuminism, having wrought fearful havoc and ruin in Europe, were now known to be extensively engaged in communicating infection and death to the citizens and institutions of this nation.[817] At Hartford the society of the Illuminati and the occult lodges of Freemasonry were represented as having “exhausted the powers of the human mind, in inventing and combining a series of dread mysteries, unhallowed machinations, and disastrous plots,” with the dissemination of the principles of Voltaire and his school as the main objective in view.[818] At Boston direct connections were made between the secret affiliated societies which the virtuous frown of Washington drove into their lurking-places and the newly discovered organizations which had just been found to be “busily engaged in sapping the foundations of society, and may ere long spring a mine, which shall blow up our Constitution and Liberties.”[819] At Portland, Maine, the unwilling prostitution of the Masonic lodges in Europe to the purposes of the Illuminati was pointed out as amounting to a threat against the institutions of America.[820] At Byfield[821] and Roxbury,[822] Massachusetts, similar warnings were heard. To a certain extent, the general employment of this anniversary of national independence to arouse the country against the machinations of the Illuminati was due to an event, long anticipated, that had occurred shortly before. Less than a month prior to July 4, 1799, Barruel’s _Memoirs of Jacobinism_ made its first appearance in New England.[823] The hopes of the supporters of the agitation were immediately raised.