The progress of this Sophism is worthy of remark. If we judge by its present growth, what a gigantic form will it assume for posterity! The Genevese Sophister of Equality and Liberty, anticipating the modern Spartacus, had already dogmatically asserted, “That the man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, first took upon himself to say this is mine, and found beings simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society.” He then continues:—”What crimes, what wars, what murders, what miseries, what horrors would that man have spared mankind, who, tearing down the fences or filling up the ditches of this new enclosure, had called out to his equals, beware of hearkening to this impostor, you are ruined if ever you forget that the fruits belong to all, though the land belongs to none.” 22 How many crimes and spoliations would Rousseau have spared the French Revolution, if, contemning so disastrous a paradox, he had said with more judgement and veracity, “The first man who enclosed a piece of land and took upon himself to say, this belongs to nobody, I will cultivate it, and from sterile it shall become fertile; I will follow the course which nature shall point out to me, to raise sustenance for

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me, my wife and children, and this land will become my property. The God of nature, who as yet has given it to nobody, offers and will give it to him who shall first cultivate it in reward for his labour.—The first man who held such language, seconding the views of nature, and meeting with beings wise enough to imitate him, was the true benefactor of mankind. He taught his children and his equals, that they were not made to dispute the wild fruits of the earth one with another, nor with the savage beasts of the forest; no, he taught them, that there existed social and domestic virtues far preferable to the roaming and often ferocious life of the Nomades. His posterity was blessed, his generations were multiplied. If it was not in his power to avert all the evils, he at least destroyed the first of them, that sterility which stinted the very growth of life and drove the scanty population of the earth into the forests like wild beasts, and too often assimilated them to the lion or the tyger, to whom they frequently fell a prey.

Had the Sophister of Geneva held this language, he would not have exposed himself to the ignominy of being the precursor of Weishaupt.—But human imbecility has lavished its praises on this paradox, and have decorated it with the name of Philosophy! The Bavarian Sophister adopts the doctrine of Rousseau, and the delirium of pride has only refined on the phrenzy of wickedness. That which in the mouth of the master had been but a paradox in support of the wildest independence, becomes in the scholar (without divesting itself of its folly) the blackest of conspiracies.

It is now too late to say, that those were the wild chimeras of the Sophisters; at present we are compelled to say, such are the plots contriving against all and each one’s property, plots which have been awfully illustrated by the spoliation of the Church, of the Nobility, of the Merchants, and of all rich proprietors Let them be called chimeras if you are so determined; but remember, that they are the chimeras of Weishaupt, of the genius of conspiring brigands, of a genius the most fertile in sophisms and artifice for the execution of those plans supposed to be chimerical. What Jean Jacques teaches his Sophisters, the modern Spartacus infuses into his Illuminized legions, The fruits belong to all, the land to none. He farther states in his dark recesses, When property began, Equality and Liberty disappeared; and it is in the name of this Equality and of this Liberty that he conspires, that he invites his conspirators to restore mankind to the Patriarchal or wandering life.

Let not the reader be imposed upon by the term Patriarchal life. The illuminizing Hierophant speaks of Abraham and of the Patriarchs, of the father priest and king, sole sovereign over his family. He is not to expect to see the father surrounded by his children, exercising the sweetest of all dominions, and each child, docile to the dictates of nature, revering the orders and anticipating the will of a beloved father. No; this empire is as imaginary as his priesthood. We have seen in the degree of Mage, that the illuminized Patriarch can no more pretend to the acknowledgement of a God than can an Atheist. We must then begin by withdrawing from the Patriarchal life that interesting sight of the father offering up to heaven the prayers of his children, sacrificing in their

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