This page has been validated.
240
OMNIANA.

128. Statistics.

We all remember Burke's curious assertion that there were 80,000 incorrigible jacobins in England. Mr. Colquhoun is equally precise in the number of beggars, prostitutes, and thieves in the city of London. Mercetinus, who wrote under Lewis the 15th, seems to have afforded the precedent; he assures his readers, that by an accurate calculation there were "50,000 incorrigible Atheists in the city of Paris!! Atheism then may have been a co-cause of the French revolution; but it should not be burthened on it, as its monster-child.


129. Magnanimity.

The following ode was written by Giordano Bruno, under prospect of that martyrdom which he soon after suffered at Rome, for atheism: i. e. as is proved by all his works, for a lofty and enlightened piety, which was of course unintelligible to bigots, and dangerous to an