s, president of the parliament of Thoulouse; the abbe
Proyart, author of a work entitled, _Louis XVI dethrone avant d'etre Roi_;
Montesquieu, Haller, Muratori, Buffon, Grotius, Leibnitz, Bacon, Frederick
the Great, Johnson, Bausset, Richelieu, Raynal, Juan, and Ulloa; with a
multitude {121} of historians and biographers, to say nothing of the Jesuit
writers themselves. But the most striking testimony in favour of the
society, is a formal judgment given by the bishops of France on certain
articles proposed for their examination, by Louis XV, relative to the
doctrine, the government, the conduct, and usefulness of the French
Jesuits. How any man can withstand such an array of testimony, I am at a
loss to conceive; and still more how he can venture, at this time of day,
to arm himself with the calumnies and horrors of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, to attack a body of men, and a code of regulations,
nowise accountable for the errors and crimes of individuals, at periods
when men, in general, were as inveterate on the score of religious
doctrines, as they have lately been on that of liberty and equality; when
the Catholic and the Hugonot were alike ferocious and cruel, in the
maintenance of their respective systems, though they scarcely equalled the
fury and the horrors demonstrated by the deists, atheists, and democratical
despots, who {122} preceded the settled tyranny, which has been just
overthrown by the united force of Europe. The Jesuits were, indeed, the
great preachers of the Christian religion, such as it had been received for
ages; but they are no more answerable for the opinions on regicide, murder,
and other horrid doctrines of former distracted times, than are the
Washingtons and Franklins for the atrocities of the Robespierres and Marats
in our own days of political insanity.

It will perhaps be thought necessary, that I should give something more
than the illustrious names I have cited; I shall therefore proceed to
prove, that I have not pressed them into the cause of the Jesuits, but
enrolled them on their voluntary appearance. I shall omit those, whom I
have already incidentally quoted, and arrange the others in the order in
which I have mentioned them. {123}

CATHERINE II, OF RUSSIA.

Catherine, when at Mohiloff, found, that the people of that part of her
dominions professed the catholic religion, and that they were very much
attached to the order of Jesuits. She appointed a catholic archbishop