favour from the kings of France; that
institute, which you yourselves, not so much out of gratitude as from a
principle of equity, have celebrated and publicly declared, that it was of
very singular service to you in your respective dioceses, is now loaded
with antiquated and groundless calumnies, is treated as a pest, which had
crept into the church, and is publicly burned with all the marks of
infamy[49]."

GANGANELLI.

Enough has been said of Clement XIV, in the foregoing pages, to entitle me
to place him among the authorities in favour of the Jesuits, {129} though
the solemn act, by which he extirpated the order, may be said to involve
him among their assailants. The motives and grounds of that act are clear,
and his private opinion of the order is no less manifest. Men, who approve
of this act of Clement, are not aware that they are approving of a corrupt
maxim, with which the enemies of the Jesuits calumniate the society.
Besides, the destruction of the order was a certain evil, and the good to
arise from it, the security and inviolability of the holy see, was far from
being a certain consequence; the contrary has been proved by subsequent
events. The growth of one generation sufficed to strip the tiara of the
veneration due to it, and to threaten every crown in Europe with ruin.
Philosophical universities and academies were every where, on the
continent, substituted for the colleges of the Jesuits; religion and reason
no longer went hand in hand in education; the latter, with all her spurious
offspring, was held up as the grand object and distinguishing character of
man; the former was neglected, {130} or ridiculed, and soon lost even its
name in that of superstition. In 1773, Clement XIV abolished the order: in
1793, a king of France was beheaded; Reason was deified, and altars erected
to her in various countries; anarchy followed impiety; demons were chosen
to rule, or rather to confound all order. A successor of Ganganelli was
torn from Rome, to die in captivity; and others have, since, been degraded
into tools of the most absolute and heathenish tyranny that ever existed on
the earth. It is very evident, therefore, that the preservation of the
power of Rome did not depend upon the destruction of the order of the
Jesuits, but, rather, that the rescript of 1773 was a warrant for the
imprisonment, if not the death, of Pius VI, and the subsequent overthrow of
the holy see. That rescript was, therefore, the resul