nd drawing his own inferences? Yet this is really the case with this
enemy of the catholic cause, whose Summary is verbatim extracted from
Robertson's Charles V, as far as it answered the purpose of {8} his attack.
Who, after reading the part selected, would suspect, if he did not know it
before, that the following paragraph, from the same elegant pen, closed the
character of the Jesuits, and must have confounded the eye of their
assailant, since it failed to wring a tribute of praise from his
heart?--"But as I have pointed out the dangerous tendency of the
constitution and spirit of the order with the freedom becoming an
historian, the candour and impartiality _no less requisite in that
character_ call on me to add one observation: That no class of regular
clergy in the Romish church has been more eminent for decency, and even
purity of manners, than the major part of the order of Jesuits. The maxims
of an intriguing, ambitious, interested policy, _might_ influence those,
who governed the society, and might even corrupt the heart, and pervert the
conduct of _some individuals_, while the greater number, engaged in
literary pursuits, or employed in the functions of religion, was left to
the guidance of those common principles, which restrain men from {9} vice,
and excite them to what is becoming and laudable[2]."

{10}

The author, in a note, acknowledges, that his Summary does not _wholly_ lay
claim to {11} originality. It is, in fact, _all_ copied: why then did he
not cite his authority? and, when he was copying, why did he omit to copy
the passages that stared him in the face? Clearly from an attorney-like
motive, because it would have injured his cause, and would have
prepossessed his reader with an idea, that, whether the charges against
some of the rulers of the order were well-founded or not, the generality of
the Jesuits were estimable men, devoting themselves to the good of mankind,
and who had spread over the earth a very considerable share of human
happiness: clearly because he foresaw, that his reader would argue with
himself, that if, in despotic times, only a few busied themselves with
political affairs, while the body at large were good men, engaged in
zealously promoting the welfare, both temporal and eternal, of their
fellow-creatures, it would be unnatural to suppose, that, in the present
enlightened times, the many would become corrupt, or even the few engage
again in intrigues dangerous to society; an