The writer of the pamphlet, not satisfied with omitting whatever might tend to defeat his object, industriously rakes out the most atrocious imputations from the avowed enemies of the Jesuits, and classes their authorities with genuine history, taking them for granted, never examining the hands through which they passed, happy in having one and only one great name on his side, that of the celebrated and very extraordinary genius, Pascal. When the Provincial Letters were alluded to, as attacking a supposed lax system of morals, did not truth require that they should be stated to have been the satirical effusions of a writer, who had espoused the cause of the Jansenists, the violent opposers of the Jesuits; and that the ridicule which they contained had been declared by another great wit, who was no enemy to ridicule, nor friend to religion (Voltaire), to be completely misapplied. A lover of truth, when
balancing opinions as proofs, would not have failed to quote from him the following passage: "It is true, indeed, that the whole book (the Provincial Letters) was built upon a false foundation; for the extravagant notions of a few Spanish and Flemish Jesuits were artfully ascribed to the whole society. Many absurdities might likewise have been discovered among the Dominican and Franciscan casuists, but this would not have answered the purpose, for the whole raillery was to be levelled only at the Jesuits. These letters were intended to prove, that the Jesuits had formed a design to corrupt mankind; a design which no sect of society ever had, or can have."
With such enemies as the Jansenists, will it be thought extraordinary, that a thousand fabrications of those days blackening the Jesuits may be referred to? With such enemies as in later times appeared against them, in the host of new philosophers and jacobins, is it wonderful that there should be modern forgeries?
One such suffrage, as that which I have quoted from Robertson, is of itself sufficient to outweigh folios of charges originating in the jealous passions of a rival sect, in the effusions of a mad mistaken philosophy, or in magisterial persecution, which, to use the vigorous language of a living genius, in "the destruction of the Jesuits, that memorable instance of puerile oppression, of jealousy, ambition, injustice, and barbarity, for these all concurred in the act, gave to public education a wound, which a whole century perhaps will not be able to heal. It freed the phalanx of materialists from a body of opponents, which still made them tremble. It remotely encouraged the formation of sanguinary clubs, by causing the withdrawing of all religious and prudent congregations, in which the savage populace of the Faubourg St. Antoine were tamed by the disciples of an Ignatius and a Xavier. Such men as Porée and La Rue, Vaniere and Jouvenci, in the academic chairs; Bourdaloue, Cheminais, Neuville, L'Enfant, in the pulpit;
Segaud, Duplessis, and Beauregard[[4]], in the processions of the cross, in the public streets and ways, were, perhaps, alike necessary to secure tranquillity in this world and happiness in the next[[5]]."
In assisting my memory, I have been led to compare the writer's extracts from Robertson with the pages of the historian himself, and I have found him, not only occasionally disfiguring the style on points of little moment, by turning the words, but giving to the author's words a sense which they were not intended to bear, by means of Italic types and additions. For instance: the historian says, "As it was the professed intention of the order of Jesuits to labour with
unwearied zeal in promoting the salvation of men, this engaged them, of course, in many active functions." On reading Robertson's work, would any one imagine, that the author meant to insinuate, that the intention was insincere, and a mere cloak to political vices? Is it not clear from all he writes, as well as from this passage taken singly, that he gave the Jesuits credit for their sincerity in devoting themselves to the salvation of men? Yet has the writer of the pamphlet, by causing the word professed to be printed in Italics, called upon his reader to take his sense of Robertson's words, and to believe, that the word professed implies deceit, instead of the open and declared intention of the Jesuits. Not content with this low falsifying of Robertson's ideas by Italic implication, he practises the same trick by an Italic addition of some lines of his own to the text of the historian, as follows: "their great and leading maxim having uniformly been, to do evil that good might come." Can any thing be more reprehensible?
I will adduce one instance more of the disingenuousness of this writer. Speaking, exclusively, of the Jesuits, he charges them with "rendering Christianity utterly odious in the vast empire of Japan[[6]]," and with "enormities in China Proper." To have implicated other priests would not, as Voltaire observed, answer the purpose: the Jesuits, as before, must be isolated to be recrushed. Now, in this, as in the other accusations, we shall find the anti-catholic writers including other orders. Let us see what one of these writers says upon this occasion: after speaking of the pride, avarice, and folly of the clergy, he tells us of an
execution of twenty-six persons, "in the number whereof were two foreign Jesuits, and several other fathers of the Franciscan order." And a little after, the same writer says, "some Franciscan friars were guilty at this time of a most imprudent step: they, during the whole of their abode in the country, preached openly in the streets of Macao, where they resided; and of their own accord built a church, contrary to the imperial commands, and contrary to the advice and earnest solicitations of the Jesuits[[7]]." The authority of the Encyclopedia Britannica will not be objected to by the enemies of the catholics; nor, I presume, will that of Montesquieu, who gives a very different reason for the Christian religion being so odious in Japan: "We have already," says he, "mentioned the perverse temper of the people of Japan. The magistrates considered the firmness which Christianity inspires, when they attempted to make the people renounce their faith, as in