[178] Webster, _The Revolution in France considered in Respect to its Progress and Effects_, New York, 1794. Webster’s discriminating pamphlet is one of the most suggestive of all American contemporaneous documents. _Cf._ Hazen, _Contemporary American Opinion of the French Revolution_, p. 259. [179] For characteristic outbursts of this nature, _cf._ Adams, _Life and Works_, vol. ii, p. 160; Gibbs, _Memoirs of the Administrations of Washington and John Adams_, vol. i, p. 90. Typical newspaper comment similar in vein may be found in the _Western Star_ (Stockbridge, Mass.), March 11, 1794, and the _Gazette of the United States_ (Philadelphia), April 13, 1793. [180] As early as 1790 John Adams had spoken of the French nation as a “republic of atheists.” (_Works_, vol. ix, p. 563.) Other leaders responded to similar sentiments. (Hazen, _Contemporary American Opinion of the French Revolution_, p. 266.) Familiarity with French philosophical and religious opinions before the French Revolution had supplied a basis for this concern. [181] Aulard, _Le culte de la Raison et de l’Être suprême_, pp. 17 _et seq._ _Cf._ Sloane, _The French Revolution and Religious Reform_, pp. 53, 79, 97. The effort to dechristianize the institutions of religion in France is admitted by both writers, but the superficial occasion of this hostile effort is made clear. [182] _Cf. infra_, pp. 103 _et seq._ [183] The practice of looking to the religious situation in France for ammunition to serve the artillery of political parties in America, is well illustrated in the following instances: _The Western Star_ of March 25, 1794, dwelt at length upon the depravity of French irreligion, and asserted that the lack of public alarm in this country must be accepted as convincing evidence that the American public has already yielded itself to the seductive influence and power of atheistical opinions. On the other hand, the _Independent Chronicle_, issues of March 6 and July 24, 1794, pounces upon Robespierre’s scheme for the rehabilitation of religion under the guise of the cult of the Supreme Being, and with great gusto asserts that here is the positive and sufficient proof that the charge of atheism which has been lodged against the Revolutionists is as baseless as it is wicked. An examination of the newspaper comment of the day supplies abundant warrant that this crying up and crying down of the charge of French infidelity went far in the direction of investing the political situation in New England with those characteristics of bitter and extravagant crimination and recrimination with which all political discussion in that section, as in fact throughout the entire country, near the close of the eighteenth century, was so deeply marked.