THE different pieces which have been published on the affair of the Jesuits (if we except therefrom the requisitories of the magistrates) breathe an animosity or fanaticism in those who have undertaken either to defend or attack the society. We may say of these historians, what Tacitus said of the historians of his time: Neutris cura posteritatis, inter infensos vel obnoxios: “None of them were influenced by any regard for posterity, being themselves among the exasperated or the obnoxious.” As the author of the following writing professes a pretty great indifference for quarrels of this sort, he has had no violence to do himself in order to tell the truth (so far at least as he has been able to come at the knowledge of it) with respect to the causes and the circumstances of this singular event: if he has sometimes told it with energy, he flatters himself at least that he has delivered it without bitterness, and he hopes that thus his work will not displease those, who like him are detached from any spirit of party or interest. He has even waited, before he published this writing, till peoples' minds should be no longer heated, in regard to the matter which is the object of it; he will lose thereby, without doubt, some readers, but the truth will gain by it, or at least be no loser.
The facts which are related here, are, for the most part, very well known in France: they are less so to foreigners, for whom we have proposed to write as well as for the French. The reflexions which have been to this historical account, may be useful to both, and perhaps still more to the French than to foreigners.
ON THE
DESTRUCTION
OF THE
Jesuits in FRANCE.
THE middle of the century, in which we live, appears destined to form an æra, not only in the history of the human mind, by the revolution which seems to be preparing itself in our opinions, but also in the history of states and empires, by the extraordinary events of which we have successively been witnesses. In less than eight years we have seen the earth shaken, swallow up a part of Portugal, Spain, Africa, and Hungary, and terrify by its shocks several other nations; a war kindled from Lisbon to Petersbourg, for some almost uncultivated tracts in North-America; the system of Europe changing suddenly its appearance at the end of two centuries by the strict and unhoped-for union of the houses of France and Austria; the consequences of that union, all contrary to what it was natural to have expected from it; the king of Prussia withstanding alone five formidable powers leagued against him, and issuing from the bosom of the storm victorious and covered with glory; an emperor cast headlong from his throne; the king of Portugal assassinated; France terrifyed at a like attempt, and trembling for a life the most precious; lastly, the Jesuits, those men who were thought so powerful, so firmly established, so redoubtable, driven from the former of these two kingdoms, and destroyed in the second. This last event, which is, for certain, neither the most melancholy, nor the greatest of those which we have just recapitulated, is perhaps neither the least surprising, nor the least susceptible of reflexions. It is for philosophers to see it such as it is, to shew it such as it is to posterity, to make known to the sages of all nations, how passion and hatred have, without knowing it, assisted reason and justice in this unexpected catastrophe.