Fast (by proclamation)

,—a farce. The people called on to go to church and neglect their business, while ministers are celebrating their carousals, and getting drunk at each others’ houses. An impious mummery, or rather blasphemy. We are told of our national sins, and, in expiation of them, are instructed to beseech the God of Peace to bless our exterminating principles of war; to set ourselves up as a people distinct, on whom, exclusively, he ought to shower his benign protection, and to crown our efforts, in destroying countless millions of his creatures. A court juggle; a flimsy, jesuitical contrivance to inflame the public mind, and to give the clergy an opportunity of promulgating their slavish maxims, their political heresies from the pulpit.