A motion for confining the censure to societies and combinations within the four western counties of Pennsylvania and the adjacent country, succeeded by the casting vote of the speaker, upon which, the friends of the amendment gave it up, and the address was voted without expressing any sentiment on the subject.
This triumph over the administration revived, for a moment, the drooping energies of these pernicious societies.

But it was only for a moment.

The agency ascribed to them by the opinion of the public, as well as of the President, in producing an insurrection which was generally execrated, had essentially affected them; and while languishing under this wound, they received a deadly blow from a quarter whence hostility was least expected.
The remnant of the French convention, rendered desperate by the ferocious despotism of the Jacobins, and of the sanguinary tyrant who had made himself their chief; perceiving that the number of victims who were immolated as his caprice might suggest, instead of satiating, could only stimulate his appetite for blood, had, at length, sought for safety by boldly confronting danger; and, succeeding in a desperate attempt to bring Robespierre to the guillotine, had terminated his reign of terror.

The colossean power of the clubs, which had been abused to an excess that gives to faithful history the appearance of fiction, fell with that of their favourite member, and they sunk into long merited disgrace.

The means by which their political influence had been maintained were wrested from them; and, in a short time, their meetings were prohibited.