[613] Ibid., p. 13.
[614] Morse was one of those New England clergymen whose earlier enthusiasm for the French Revolution had been pronounced. In a sermon preached on the occasion of the national thanksgiving of 1795, he confessed his profound interest in the French cause, on account of what that people had accomplished in breaking the chains of civil and ecclesiastical tyranny. At the same time he voiced his concern because a spirit of vandalism had lately arisen in France, by which all the salutary results of the Revolution were gravely imperiled. Still, his hopes for the recovery of the nation’s self-control were strong. Cf. The Present Situation of Other Nations of the World, Contrasted with our Own. A Sermon, delivered at Charlestown, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, February 19, 1795; being the day recommended by George Washington, President of the United States of America, for Publick Thanksgiving and Prayer. By Jedidiah Morse, D. D., minister of the congregation in Charlestown, Boston, 1795, pp. 10–16. Cf. also the Preface to Morse’s Fast Day Sermon of April 25, 1799.
[615] Morse, Sermon on the National Fast, May 9, 1798, p. 13.
[616] The X. Y. Z. despatches.
[617] Morse, Sermon on the National Fast, May 9, 1798, pp. 14 et seq.
[618] Morse, op. cit., p. 17.
[619] Ibid., p. 19.
[620] Ibid., p. 20.
[621] Morse, op. cit., p. 20.
[622] Morse’s first acquaintance with Robison’s volume is thus explained by him: “The first copies which were sent to America, arrived at Philadelphia and New York, at both which places the re-printing of it was immediately undertaken, and the Philadelphia edition was completed ready for sale in the short space of 3 weeks. This was about the middle of April. Happening at this time to be in Philadelphia, and hearing the work spoken of in terms of the highest respect by men of judgment, one of them went so far as to pronounce it the most interesting work that the present century had produced; I was induced to procure a copy, which I brought home with me….” (Independent Chronicle, June 14, 1798.) In Sprague’s Life of Jedediah Morse, pp. 233 et seq., it is affirmed that Dr. Erskine, one of Morse’s Scottish correspondents, wrote Morse in January, 1797, informing him of the alarm which had sprung up in Europe with respect to the “conspiracy”, and calling attention to Robison’s volume which was then being prepared for the press.