intercourse of friendship and esteem. But Coudrette a Jesuit! How can this be credited? New personages in comedies are introduced to excite new interest; and was Coudrette ever before named in this island? Indeed his name is so very obscure, that it is difficult to find, even a Frenchman, who ever heard it. It has however obtained a small niche in two French historical dictionaries, the first of which, par une societé des gens-de-lettres, though friendly to the Jansenists, styles Coudrette un ennemi acharné des Jesuits. The other, by the well known abbé Feller, a man of very general information, asserts, that Coudrette had been from his youth, de tres bonne heure, a violent partisan of Jansenism, closely connected with the abbé Boursier, one of the heroes of the sect. In 1735 and 1738, during the ministry of cardinal de Fleury, he was confined by a lettre de cachet first at Vincennes, then in the Bastille, for his intrigues, cabals, and libels against the church; and of course he was canonized as a saint in the Nouvelles Ecclesiastiques, the well known
Jansenistical gazette. When the parliaments denounced open war against the Jesuits, he came forward a volunteer in the cause, and printed his Histoire general des Jesuites in the course of 1761: but Coudrette and his history were perfectly forgotten in France before 1762. How could a copy of it have escaped into England? It has found its proper repository on the shelves of Laicus, or his employer[[115]].
I have done with Laicus and his authorities. He promises a commentary upon his own performance. It has not, I believe, yet appeared,
even in the Times. Mine shall be very short.
Though I have proved Laicus and his associates to be unprincipled impostors, I have said nothing of them and their assertions, but what every man of virtue and information knows to be true. Every prince, every observer knows, that the overthrow of the society of Jesus was the first link in the concatenation of causes, which produced the late horrible successes of rebellion and infidelity. They all know, that the Jesuits, when their body was intire, were among the most active supporters of religion, learning, good order, and subordination to established powers, though, perhaps, professing religious creeds different from their own. Above all, they know, that Jesuits were every where staunch and steady friends of monarchy. Who then will wonder, that the renowned Catherine of Russia protected them in their greatest distress, unbendingly maintaining the full integrity of their institute, even in the smallest points? Who will be
surprised, that the heroic Alexander continues to distinguish them by fresh favours? Who will cavil at Pius VII, in this new dawn of public tranquillity, for his endeavours to recover their services? Who will blame other princes for imitating his example? Possibly the good pontiff may conceive himself more bound than other princes, to make some compensation to the few remaining Jesuits, because he was a witness of the aggravated cruelties inflicted upon them and their superiors, at the time of the suppression by his predecessor Clement XIV. But the motives and the conduct of these princes present matter too ample to be treated at present by
CLERICUS.