Following their publication, other matters appear to have held the restless attention of Cobbett for a time and no further reference of an extended character to the affairs of the Illuminati appeared in this paper until February of the following year.
Upon the receipt of a copy of Morse’s thanksgiving sermon, Cobbett communicated to his readers the joy he experienced in being able to put them in possession of extracts from it.[756] Morse’s sermon, in his judgment, was an extraordinary performance. Of its Appendix he wrote:
“This Appendix is one of the most valuable political tracts that ever appeared in America, whether we view it as a collection of facts, or as an address to the reason and feelings of the people.”[757] Of the sermon as a whole he wrote:
It has gone through two editions, and a third is about to be commenced. Doctor Morse has long been regarded as a benefactor to his country; but notwithstanding his former labours have been of great utility, this last work, I have no hesitation to say, surpasses them all in this respect; and it must, if there be any such thing as national gratitude in America, render the author the object of universal esteem. He has brought to light facts which people in general never before dreamed of, and however deaf the middle and southern states may be to his warning voice, New-England will listen to it.[758]
This was very strong language, providing the personality of William Cobbett is left out of account! How soothingly it fell upon the ears of a certain clergyman in New England, which ears, it may be remarked, were growing accustomed to much less kindly comment, we may leave to conjecture.
As for Benjamin Franklin Bache, the editor of the Aurora[759] and as militant an advocate of Democratic principles as this country contained, all such views of the case were so much puerile fol de rol. Robison’s Proofs was a blending of “a most absurd collection of stories respecting the mystical societies in Germany with some fragments of histories of French Free Masonry, … [an] inconsistent Farrago.”[760] Weak indeed must be the cause of despotism “when its Satellites can imagine a dissemination of such contemptible mummery would calumniate the friends of Liberty or paralize their efforts to explore the divinity of kings, or the dogma of priests.”[761] The explanation of Morse’s faith in Robison’s book is to be sought in the fact that the minister of Charlestown received his doctor’s degree from the University of Glasgow; and therefore on the principle, “Tickle me and I’ll scratch you,” the Glasgow professor’s production was entitled to credit.[762]
3. MORSE SUBMITS HIS INEPT DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE
The national skies had by no means cleared of threatening clouds when, in the early spring of 1799, the time arrived for President Adams to issue his annual fast day proclamation. In the view of the nations chief executive the questions of the hour were still of great urgency and it was a season of imminent danger.[763] Accordingly, in appointing Thursday, April 25, as the day for the people of the nation to perform acts of solemn humiliation, fasting and prayer, he justified in part the issuance of the proclamation on the following grounds:
The most precious interests of the people of the United States are still held in jeopardy by the hostile designs and insidious acts of a foreign nation, as well as by the dissemination among them of those principles, subversive of the foundations of all religious, moral, and social obligations, that have produced incalculable mischief and misery in other countries.[764]