The professed objects of the author of a pamphlet, entitled "A brief Account of the Jesuits," as stated in a preface, are "to examine the propriety of extending papal patronage and protestant protection to the Jesuits, and, as stated in page 2 of the pamphlet, to show, that the revival of the order is so pregnant with danger as to call for the interference of parliament." The plan he pursues to effect these objects is, to give a summary of the history of the order, to furnish some historical evidences in support of its correctness, and to argue from these for the affirmative of his proposition. The plan is well enough laid; but the author
has executed it in such a manner as to make it evident, that he was not in search of truth, that he deceives himself if he thinks he was, that he is only a violent and abusive disputant, that he is an enemy to the catholics in general, and that, the question on their claims being exhausted, he renovates the combat by attacking them through the sides of the Jesuits. When an advocate handles a cause, which it is his duty to gain for his client, we know, that he brings forward every fact, and urges every argument, that tends to support the positions on which his cause hinges, sedulously masking every circumstance that contravenes his statement, and avoiding every suggestion that weakens his reasoning upon it. But the man, who is in pursuit of truth, of whatever nature it be, looks at his object on all sides; he handles it, not to make of it what he wishes, but to determine what it is; he analyses, he re-composes; he takes the good and the bad as he finds them, and truth results from his investigation. Let us see which of these two characters belongs to the writer of the pamphlet. Every word of his
"Historical Summary" is intended to place the Jesuits in an odious point of view; nor is a single sentence admitted into it by which one could be led to imagine, that any thing good had ever originated from them, or that they were not universally demons in the shape of men. The writer goes in search of matter to compile his Summary, and he finds an account of the Jesuits composed on the authority of various publications, which have appeared at different times. In a part of this narrative, he finds all that has been said to blacken the order, and, also, a genuine passage of their history, which no man of any feeling can read without enthusiastic admiration; now, would the writer, who was in search of truth, have selected only that which was calculated to produce condemnation, without giving his reader an opportunity of comparing facts and drawing his own inferences? Yet this is really the case with this enemy of the catholic cause, whose Summary is verbatim extracted from Robertson's Charles V, as far as it answered the purpose of
his attack. Who, after reading the part selected, would suspect, if he did not know it before, that the following paragraph, from the same elegant pen, closed the character of the Jesuits, and must have confounded the eye of their assailant, since it failed to wring a tribute of praise from his heart?—"But as I have pointed out the dangerous tendency of the constitution and spirit of the order with the freedom becoming an historian, the candour and impartiality no less requisite in that character call on me to add one observation: That no class of regular clergy in the Romish church has been more eminent for decency, and even purity of manners, than the major part of the order of Jesuits. The maxims of an intriguing, ambitious, interested policy, might influence those, who governed the society, and might even corrupt the heart, and pervert the conduct of some individuals, while the greater number, engaged in literary pursuits, or employed in the functions of religion, was left to the guidance of those common principles, which restrain men from
vice, and excite them to what is becoming and laudable[[2]]."
The author, in a note, acknowledges, that his Summary does not wholly lay claim to
originality. It is, in fact, all copied: why then did he not cite his authority? and, when he was copying, why did he omit to copy the passages that stared him in the face? Clearly from an attorney-like motive, because it would have injured his cause, and would have prepossessed his reader with an idea, that, whether the charges against some of the rulers of the order were well-founded or not, the generality of the Jesuits were estimable men, devoting themselves to the good of mankind, and who had spread over the earth a very considerable share of human happiness: clearly because he foresaw, that his reader would argue with himself, that if, in despotic times, only a few busied themselves with political affairs, while the body at large were good men, engaged in zealously promoting the welfare, both temporal and eternal, of their fellow-creatures, it would be unnatural to suppose, that, in the present enlightened times, the many would become corrupt, or even the few engage again in intrigues dangerous to society; and that he
would conclude, that the labour of the author resolved itself into a new attempt against tolerating the catholic religion; while in favour of toleration he would find, in addition to the suggestions of his reason, his memory supplied with innumerable, irrefragable arguments, which for years past have resounded throughout the empire, in the houses of parliament as well as in the remotest villages, enforced by princes of the realm with all the energy of learning and of eloquence, as well as by individuals of every class of men, in speeches, and in writings, in books, pamphlets, and the columns of such newspapers as are open to liberal discussion[[3]].