urce of the gift of thirty thousand pounds to the new
seminary: _no money has been recently transmitted from the society here to
Ireland_. The sum, on which the new house of education is rising, _was not
secured by the Jesuits from the wreck of the society_: it is, strictly, the
_private property_ of a free Briton. This, I am informed, on good
authority, is the fact; but, supposing it had been saved by the Jesuits
from the ruin of their continental establishments, from which they were so
cruelly turned adrift, and plundered by despots, because they were
Englishmen; nay, supposing every guinea of it had been coined at the mint
of _king Nicolas of Paraguay_, could this authorize sir John to assume the
despotic {119} principle of a foreign minister, a Pombal, a Choiseul, and
to decide at once, _de son chef_, in the land of liberty, that his
unoffending fellow subjects, who, under the safeguard of the laws, are
prosecuting an honourable profession, shall again be stripped and subjected
to arbitrary confiscation? If the Ganganellian maxim, that "the accused may
be plundered without being heard," be tolerated at Rome, in the "_plenitude
of power_, which the pope possesses, as moderator of the Christian
republic," it is far otherwise in this happy land, where men, no longer
persecuted for their religious opinions, maintaining their _sworn_
allegiance to their king, are sure for their persons and property to find
safety in the laws, and protection from the sovereign.

I have spoken of sir John Hippisley's opinions freely; I trust I have not
done it coarsely. I was greatly surprised to find him taking the part he
does. Of Clement XIV I feel inclined to speak more harshly than I have. I
remember being pleased with his Letters when I was a {120} boy, upon the
same principle that I was pleased with the meeting of the _Etats Generaux_,
in 1789, at Versailles, where I was a spectator: a philosophical pope, and
a philosophical senate, were mental _bon bons_, adapted to the puerile
taste of my understanding; but, grown old, I have no relish for either.
Ganganelli degraded the tiara, and helped to prepare the French revolution.

I now return to our authorities. I have anticipated several great names
incidentally, while engaged in canvassing those cited against the Jesuits;
to these I have now to add the empress Catherine of Russia; of many popes,
Clement XIII in particular, and the very destroyer of the society, Clement
XIV; M. D'Eguille