Address to the Genoese, 1797.
"I will respond, citizens, to the confidence you have reposed in me. It is not enough that you refrain from hostility to religion. You should do nothing which can cause inquietude to tender consciences. To exclude the nobles from any public office, is an act of extreme injustice. You thus repeat the wrong which you condemn in them. Why are you people of Genoa so changed? Their first impulses of fraternal kindness have been succeeded by terror and fear. Remember that the priests were the first who rallied around the tree of liberty. They first told you that the morality of the gospel is democratic. Men have taken advantage of the faults, perhaps of the crimes of individual priests, to unite against Christianity. You have proscribed without discrimination. When a State becomes accustomed to condemn without hearing, to applaud a discourse because it is impassioned; when exaggeration and madness are called virtue, moderation and equity designated as crimes, that State is near its ruin. Believe me, I shall consider that one of the happiest moments of my life in which I hear that the people of Genoa are united among themselves and live happily."
