Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/117

Rh The course of the French Revolution was affecting Hannah powerfully. She had looked on at first with hope, and rejoiced in the destruction of the Bastille; but as the counsels of the more violent party began to prevail, disapproval soon became disgust and horror, and her pen was actively employed against the principles they avowed. A speech of Citizen Dupont in the National Assembly on the 14th of December 1792, was a direct attack on religion, not unlike the declamations which, after the lapse of nearly another century, are again to be heard in France. "Nature and Reason, these are the gods of men," was his cry, as he called on the Assembly to found schools of public instruction whence Christianity should be banished. Against these arguments of Sansfoy, the Britomart of Mendip couched her lance, in a pamphlet whose proceeds were devoted to the support of the seven thousand emigrant clergy who had taken shelter in England. Emotion lifts the author into eloquence in her final paragraphs, above all in the prayer with which she concludes that the righteous nation may haply find, while the discovery can still be attended with hope and consolation, that "doubtless there is a reward for the righteous, verily there is a God that judgeth the earth."

Paine's writings were exciting much alarm among the upper classes, and were either themselves or travesties of them spreading widely among the lower; and