the mound was thrown down, and how could the
torrent be withstood?

What thinking man shall now wonder, that the much tried pontiff, Pius VII,
having, during his captivity, seriously pondered the connexion of causes
and effects, should wish to retrieve the ancient order of things, should
even hasten to second the wishes and requests of his fellow sufferers--I
mean the surviving princes and prelates, who so sorely rue the mistakes of
their immediate predecessors? It is very remarkable, that the false policy
of these latter was first discerned and publicly disapproved by two acute
sovereigns, who were not of the Roman communion, the magnanimous Catherine
of {328} Russia, and the far famed Frederic III, of Prussia. These
sovereigns were not ignorant of the various artifices, which had distorted
the good sense of the catholic princes. They knew how to elude and
disappoint them, when they were practised upon themselves. The empress
Catherine especially, in despite of Rome, Versailles, Lisbon, and Madrid,
maintained, with a resolute and strong hand, the several houses of Jesuits,
which she found in her new Polish dominions; she would not suffer even the
smallest alteration to be made, in any of their statutes or practices. Her
two successors have settled them in their capital, and in other parts of
their empire; and at this day, the glorious Alexander, far from mistrusting
those fathers, openly cherishes and favours them, at once as blameless
ministers of the catholic religion, and as trusty servants of government,
earnestly labouring to endear the new sceptre of the czars to the catholic
Poles, lately united to their empire[120].

{329}

Most undoubtedly, next to the purity of religion, the best and dearest
interest of the Jesuits always was, and always must be, public
tranquillity, order, and subordination of ranks. In tumults and confusion,
they must unavoidably be sacrificed. To favour the daring projects of civil
and religious innovators, their body was devoted to destruction; and the
extinction of it was presently followed by the universal uproar of the
Gallic revolution. Hence their name is odious to Buonaparte. In his
progress through Germany, he drove them from Ausburg, and Friburg, and
other towns, where the magistrates and inhabitants had succeeded to
preserve a small remnant of their body, though without hope of perpetuating
it by succession. In 1805 the court of Naples, convinced of its past error,
reinstated t