Ulloa. As the three last names are authorities in favour of the Jesuits, I shall not notice them at present. D'Alembert and the Encyclopedie may go together, for he and Diderot, who wrote the article Jesuite in that work, were the chief directors of it. To men, who have recovered from the stun of jacobinism, it is hardly necessary to say, that the destruction of the Jesuits was of the first importance to the success of D'Alembert and Diderot's philosophical reform of human nature. The article written by the latter was completely refuted by a French Jesuit named Courtois, but only the writers against the order were read or cited. When the Jesuits first appeared in France, the parliament hated them as friends of the pope; the university as rival teachers. These two bodies combined to exterminate them. The university was perpetually bringing actions against them before the parliaments, but they found protection from the throne and the ministry. The university was exasperated at the desertion of their scholars, who flocked to the Jesuit schools, and at
the loss of their emoluments called landi, paid by students to the professors: the Jesuits taught gratuitously, and the high reputation of the celebrated Maldonado enraged the doctors beyond measure. The parliaments and the doctors were the chief fomenters of the league; and they were seconded by all the religious orders, the Jesuits excepted. The parliament, headed by Harlay, made flaming harangues and arrets: the doctors of the university and friars exhibited fanatical processions and sermons; they pronounced Henry III and Henry IV excommunicated tyrants; they canonized Jacques Clement; they rewarded his mother and family; they openly preached regicide. Their rage equalled that of the modern jacobins. They all, of course, detested the Jesuits, who, we may believe, were also obnoxious to the Hugonot party. When the league was expiring, by the conversion of Henry IV, the parliaments and university, constrained to abjure it, were nevertheless determined upon effecting the banishment of the Jesuits before
the king could enter on his government. The doctors renewed their suits, and employed as advocates Arnaud, Pasquier, and Dollé, who went into the courts with certainty of success. Completely successful they would have been, but for the wisdom of the minister, the duke de Sully, who, though a leader of the Hugonots, and consequently not biassed in favour of the Jesuits, indeed evidently their enemy, was too nobly minded to give an advantage to their assailants, which his master would not have done. He stopped the proceedings, by interposing the authority of the absent king, "which," said he, "is not to be compromised pour une pique de pretres et de theologiens[[10]]." The prosecutors and the judges, disconcerted for the time, resolved to lose no opportunity to effect their object, and they soon found one in the crime of Chatel, in which they triumphed without a shadow of proof. Not a Jesuit was ever proved to have entered into the league: no writer accuses them of it, the advocates
just mentioned excepted; and their invectives, amassed in Les Extraits des Assertions, are the sole foundation of all that is said by Monclar, Chalotais, and the other authors of the Comptes Rendus.
It was necessary to enter into this detail to enable the reader to trace the foul sources of the chief authorities on which Robertson relied: but what shall we think of them, in spite of that historian's compliment to the elegance of their pens, when we hear, that these procureurs were but the nominal authors of their respective Comptes Rendus, the mean instruments of the ingenious atheists, who were preparing France for the age of reason, the liberty of jacobinism, and the murders of philosophy? That presented by Chalotais was written by D'Alembert himself; that of Riquet, procureur general of the parliament of Thoulouse, was composed by Comtezat, a notoriously debauched priest; that of Monclar, of Aix, was sent to him from Paris, with a promise of being the next chancellor of France, if he would adopt it, and
engage his parliament in the cause. The venerable president of that parliament, D'Eguilles, refusing to concur in the measure, was, through his means, banished, and his adherents with him, by a lettre de cachet. Monclar died repentant, and retracted all that he had said in presence of the bishop of Apt, who made a minute of the fact. As for Chalotais; would the historian have cited him had he seen the following character of that lawyer, drawn by a pen not inferior to his own, distinguished by various works of genius, and which was employed on one of the most interesting portions of English history, when his sovereign, having occasion for his talents in a trying crisis of his affairs, called him to his councils?[[11]] "The procureur general of Bretagne, La Chalotais, eager to possess popularity, in order that he might arrive at power,
enthusiastic in his friendships, violent in his hatred, both of which were to him concerns of interest rather than of sentiment; blending with these private principles the formidable powers of his public ministry, being the oracle of a parliament, which, consisting of the first nobility of the country, always acted in concert with, and never in opposition to the States; this man had it in his power to arm his ambition or his vengeance with the sword of justice; he could give a legal sanction to tumult, and make trifles appear of serious importance; he could convert the most vapid declamation into the gravest denunciation, and, in a word, could assist the party, that he chose to espouse, with the whole artillery of decrees and arrets, which may be regarded as the ultima ratio of the parliament, on the same principle, that cannon are the ultima ratio of kings. The instant that such a man took part in the dispute, it might well be expected, that the whole province would be immediately thrown into universal confusion. In the year 1764, the duke D'Aiguillon,
commandant of Bretagne, a peer of France, grand nephew of cardinal Richelieu, nephew of the then minister, lastly a friend of the Jesuits, and in great favour with the dauphin, was denounced in the parliament of Bretagne, by the procureur general on his arrival in Paris. This man, who was the violent enemy of that society, was also the devoted agent of the king's mistress, and of the prime minister, who were leagued together to bring about the destruction of the Order."
So much for the reliance to be placed on La Chalotais. There remains another authority of Robertson's to be noticed, viz. "The History of the Jesuits." He does not mention the name of the author of it, but no doubt it was Coudrette's, as he would otherwise have felt it incumbent upon him to make some distinction. This man was a decided partizan of the French parliaments, and well known to be an inveterate enemy of the Jesuits. As his character is well drawn in the following
Letters[[12]], I shall say nothing more of him here, than that his work evidently appears unworthy of being referred to as an authority.