a new committee might be formed, consisting of ministers and members of Parliament, laid before them his designs, and frankly asked whether they would support him or not? The magistrates answered, no; and the ministers dared not say, yes.-D'Invau immediately gave up his place, and refused to retire upon a pension; because, as he said, he had done nothing. It was then again thought necessary to take a Comptrollergeneral of Finance from, the Grand Chamber: the Duke de Choiseul and the Parliament conAbbé curred in choosing the Abbé Terray, who proved a principal instrument of that ruin, in which the Parliament and the Duke de Choiseul were similarly involved.

Terray.

Jesuits. The destruction of the Jesuits, that memorable instance of puerile oppression, of jealousy, ambition, injustice, and barbarity, for each of these prevailed 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

* "These men die hard," said D'Alembert to one of his familiars, with whom he had been to hear the famous sermon preached by P. Beauregard, against the apostles of infidelity.

the formation of sanguinary clubs, by causing all religious and prudent congregations to withdraw themselves, in which the savage populace of Faubourg St. Antony was 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, in the processions of the cross, in the public streets, and cross-ways, were perhaps alike necessary to secure tranquillity in this world, and happiness in the next. Voltaire himself wrote respectfully to Father Tournemine.

Frederick, so justly styled the Great, who yet yielded to human nature in some of its greatest foibles, sometimes appeared to be convinced of the dangerous principles of all these false philosophers, whose adulatory attentions he was weak enough to be pleased with. In one of these moments, in which his good sense retained the ascendancy over his self-love, when the news reached him of the proscription of the Jesuits in France, by the confidential agents of supreme authority-Poor souls, said he, they have destroyed the foxes which defended them from the jaws of the wolves, and they do not perceive that they are about to be devoured.

Whomsoever his Prussian Majesty meant by the wolves, it is well known that the same Parliament that devoured the Jesuits, in 1764, were equally disposed to devour the episcopal body in 1765. By its own authority it annulled the acts of the assembly of the clergy. At this time it was that so noble a step was taken by thirtytwo Bishops, and as many members of the second order, who, representing the whole assembly of the clergy, went in deputation to Versailles, and addressed the King in a speech, the first sentence of which ran thus: Sire, what upstart power is this, which presumes to establish itself so suddenly on the ruins both of the altar and the throne? The King annulled the arret of the Parliament, which breathed the most rancorous vengeance. The quarrel spread with all its venom amid the various powers of the State, the spiritual and civil, royal and judiciary authorities; and every department was full of confusion and disorder.

Whenever the rights of the Monarchy and those of the different bodies of the State shall be disputed, it will always produce dangerous dissentions. For ten years France had resounded with the clamour every where occasioned by the

religious disputes. Jansenism and Molinism had had at Paris their staff-officers and their headquarters. Here, Prelates ordered the sacraments to be refused to those who did not admit the bull Unigenitus; there, the Parliament, to punish the Prelates for refusing the usual assistance of the Church, deprived them of their temporalties; now the Princes of the Blood, and the Peers of the kingdom, were invited by the Magistrates to take seats in the Parliament; now the King forbade the Princes to vote in the Parliament of Paris on affairs, the cognizance of which he reserved for his Privy Council. These troubles had spread to almost every town throughout the kingdom. In vain did Louis XV. like a father anxious to part children exasperated against one another, impose silence on all; the Parliaments, constantly jealous of their authority, and pretending that the spiritual and civil jurisdiction could not be separated, as spiritual disputes necessarily drew after them state disputes, caused several mandements issued by Bishops to be burnt by the hand of the public executioner, and ceased attending to the administration of justice. On their part, the Bishops drew up new formularies, and one of them went so far as to declare those excommunicated who should read the decrees and remon

strances of the Parliaments on the bull and other religious matters. The Parliaments were exiled; so was the Archbishop of Paris: and it was found necessary to hold a Bed of Justice, in which the King enjoined the Bishops and Curates moderation and discretion, and ordered that all the disputes should be buried in oblivion. An attempt being made on the life of the King during these transactions, by a fanatic whose imagination had been inflamed by the murmurs he had heard at public places, all the popular commotions on the subject of religion were absorbed in the general consternation caused by the crime. The misfortunes of war smothered without extinguishing these disputes. After the peace of 1763, the Indian Trial, and the circumstances attending it, spread indignation and terror throughout the army; the generals and provincial commanders saw all at once their zeal fettered, their safety shaken, and their dignity debased. In the course of these intestine dissentions, a bare narrative of which would fill several volumes, the Duke, afterwards Mareschal de Fitz-James, was ordered by the Parliament of Toulouse, and the Marquis Dumesnil by the Parliament of Grenoble, to be arrested; and the Duke d'Aiguil lon was denounced by the Procureur-General of