Tappan was again heard from, in February, 1795, on the day set for the observance of the national thanksgiving.[204] He dealt with the political situation at length, and emphasized particularly the destructive effects of French influence. Before his sermon was committed to the hands of the printer, Tappan was made acquainted with the fact that the minister of Rowley, the Reverend Ebenezer Bradford, had made certain apologetic comments, on the occasion of the national thanksgiving, respecting the importance of French success to the peace and tranquility of America, and the propriety of seeking the reason for the recent insurrection in western Pennsylvania in “impolitic laws” rather than in French influence exerted through Democratic Clubs,[205] as Federalists had made bold to claim.[206] To these observations Tappan made the following sharp retort: The destructive effects of them [_i. e._, secret political clubs] in France have been noticed in the preceding discourse. Their unhappy influence in this country is sufficiently exemplified in that spirit of falsehood, of party and faction, which some of them, at least, assiduously and too successfully promote, and especially in the late dangerous and expensive western insurrection, which may be evidently traced, in a great degree, to the inflammatory representations and proceedings of these clubs, their abettors and friends.[207] Medford’s minister acquitted himself with something more than his customary fiery earnestness on the occasion of this same national festival. Mounting his pulpit, he pictured to his hearers “the reign of a ferocious and atheistical anarchy in France,” whose authors had “formed the design of bringing other nations to fraternize with them in their infernal principles and conduct.”[208] Their emissaries, Osgood argued, have spread themselves abroad and entered into every country open to them. In Geneva these abandoned creatures have been “horribly successful in overthrowing a free government but lately established, and in bringing on, in imitation of what had happened in their own country, one revolution after another.” The same identical agents have found their way into the United States and have begun here their poisonous fraternizing system.[209] The sermon as a whole could scarcely have been more violent in tone. It is very clear that Osgood had resolved to do what he could to rouse the country.