press of Russia countenanced the re-organization of the society within
her dominions, "it was in a degraded state, to suit the views of her
policy;" and, in a note, he informs the world at large, that "a
correspondent of great consideration observed, that the empress was well
pleased with the opportunity of snapping her fingers (_narguer_) at the
courts of Versailles and Madrid, and showing them and the world at large,
that she could render the institution tractable by her superior authority
and management; that is, that she could tame wild beasts, which _they_ were
forced to destroy[34]." It is not for me to {88} divine by what means sir
John, or his correspondent, obtained such possession of the secrets of
Catherine's mind, as to be able to decide, in the face of the world, that
her conduct, in saving the Jesuits, was guided by petty motives of private
interest, and especially the secret desire _de narguer_, in plain English
to jeer and jibe, to fleer and flout, the French and Spanish courts; but,
if so, it evidently supposes some previous cause of dissatisfaction with
those courts. What that cause was it is for sir John or his correspondent
to state: to the generality of men, I believe, it remains a mystery. I am
ignorant of any such cause, and, being in the class of ordinary observers,
I ascribe the conduct of the empress to the more generous motives, which
she and her two successors have avowed to the world. These are, the duty of
providing for their catholic subjects suitable ministers and teachers;
their knowledge {89} that the Jesuits of White Russia are such; their
abhorrence of the injustice, which would strip them of their property, of
their civil state and profession, and abolish their canonical existence,
without any proof of crime or misdemeanour; and, finally, their royal word
and faith pledged to maintain inviolably the _status quo_ of the catholic
religion and its ministers, as settled in the _pacta conventa_ of the
cession of White Russia to their dominion[35]. These motives {90} have
something in them honourable, generous, and dignified. I revere the
empress, who, acting upon them, could at once read a lesson of justice to
other monarchs, and rescue from destruction a remnant of the persecuted
society. Instead of attributing to her the paltry spirit _de narguer_, I
will, with sir John's permission, apply to her the praise which Cicero
addressed to Caesar, in his oration for Marcellus: "Nobilissimam famili