the ablest men of Europe in their
favour, was by the constant appeals which they made to the feelings of
humanity, and the resolution with which they denounced the cruelties,
equally impolitic and inhuman, which the Romish Church, whenever it had
the power, still exercised on the unhappy victims who occasionally fell
under the barbarous laws of former times. This atrocious adherence to
antiquated severity, in the vain idea of coercing the freedom of modern
thought, in an age of increasing philanthropy, was, perhaps, the
greatest cause of the spread of modern infidelity, and of the general
horror with which the Roman Catholic Church was generally regarded by
enlightened men throughout Europe. In this respect their labours are
worthy of the highest approbation; and in so far as they mainly
contributed to destroy the dreadful fabric of ecclesiastical tyranny
which the Romish Church had established wherever their faith was still
prevalent, they deserve, and will ever obtain, the warmest thanks of all
friends of humanity. But, like most other reformers, in the ardour of
their zeal for the removal of real grievances, they destroyed, also,
beneficent institutions. It appears, too, from his confidential
correspondence, that Voltaire's zeal in the cause of humanity was more a
war-cry assumed to rouse a party, than a feeling of benevolence towards
mankind; for no one rejoiced more sincerely than he did when the
acerbity of the fanatics was directed against each other.

"It must ever be regretted," says M. De Tocqueville, "that Voltaire, in
undertaking the defence of outraged humanity, appeared to have had no
other object but to employ his sensibility to render the Roman Catholic
religion odious." The same man who had expressed such touching regrets
on the fate of the unhappy Calas, a Protestant, who had been broken on
the wheel without sufficient evidence, on a charge of murder by a
sentence of the parliament of Toulouse, permitted the most cruel irony
to flow from his pen when tortures were inflicted on the Jesuits. 'I
hear,' said he, 'that they have at last _burned three Jesuits_ at
Lisbon. This is truly _consoling intelligence_; but unhappily it rests
on the authority of a Jansenist.' (Voltaire to M. Vernet, 1760.) 'It is
said that they have broken Father Malagrida on the wheel: _God be
praised for it! I should die content if I could see the Jansenists and
Molenists crushed to death by each other._' (Letter to the Countess of