theory which, though often misunderstood, is pregnant with great truths, and is better calculated than any other system to develop the intellect, because it involves that clear conception of law, the attainment of which is the highest point the human understanding can reach.

These considerations will enable the reader to see the immense importance of that revival of Jansenism, which took place in the French church during the eighteenth century. For, Jansenism being essentially Calvinistic, 12 those tendencies appeared in France by which Calvinism is marked. There appeared the inquisitive, democratic, and insubordinate spirit, which has always accompanied that creed. A further confirmation of the truth of the principles just laid down is, that Jansenism originated with a native of the Dutch Republic; that it was introduced into France during the glimpse of freedom which preceded the power of Louis XIV.;" that it was forcibly repressed in his arbitrary reign;45 and that before the middle of the eighteenth century, it again arose, as the natural product of a state of society by which the French Revolution was brought about.

The connexion between the revival of Jansenism and the destruction of the Jesuits, is obvious. After the death of Louis XIV., the Jansenists rapidly gained ground, even in the Sorbonne; and by the middle of the eighteenth century, they had

doctrine of necessity, or something extremely like it, laid down by Augustin. See the interesting extracts in Neander's Hist. of the Church, vol. vi. pp. 424, 425; where, however, a loophole is left to let in the idea of interference, or at all events of superintendence.

42 "The five principal tenets of Jansenism, which amount in fact to the doctrine of Calvin." Palmer on the Church, vol. i. p. 320; and see the remarks of Mackintosh in his Memoirs, vol. i. p. 411. According to the Jesuits, "Paulus genuit Augustinum, Augustinus Calvinum, Calvinus Jansenium, Jansenius Sancryanum, Sancryanus Arnaldum et fratres ejus." Des Réaux, Historiettes, vol. iv. pp. 71, 72. Compare Huetius de Rebus ad eum pertinentibus, p. 64 : "Jansenium dogmata sua ex Calvinianis fontibus derivasse."

43 Jansenius was born in a village near Leerdam, and was educated, if I mistake not, in Utrecht.

4 The introduction of Jansenism into France is superficially related by Duvernet (Hist. de la Sorbonne, vol. ii. pp. 170-175); but the reader will find a contemporary and highly characteristic account in Mém. de Motteville, vol. ii. pp. 224-227. The connexion between it and the spirit of insubordination was remarked at the time; and Des Réaux, who wrote in the middle of the seventeenth century, mentions an opinion that the Fronde "étoit venue du Jansénisme." Historiettes, vol. iv. p. 72. Omer Talon too says that, in 1648, "il se trouvoit que tous ceux qui étoient de cette opinion n'aimoient pas le gouvernement présent de l'état. Mém. d'Omer Talon, vol. ii. pp. 280, 281.

45 Brienne, who knew Louis XIV. personally, says, "Jansénisme, l'horreur du roi." Mem. de Brienne, vol. ii. p. 240. Compare Duclos, Mém. Secrets, vol. i. p. 112. At the end of his reign he promoted a bishop on the avowed ground of his opposition to the Jansenists; this was in 1713. Lettres inédites de Maintenon, vol. ii. pp. 396, 406; and see further vol. i. pp. 220, 222.

"La Sorbonne, moliniste sous Louis XIV, fut janséniste sous le régent, et toujours divisée." Duvernet, Hist. de la Sorbonne, vol. ii. p. 225.

48

About

organized a powerful party in the French parliament."7 the same period, their influence began to show itself in the executive government, and among the officers of the crown, Machault, who held the important post of controller-general, was known to favour their opinions, and a few years after his retirement, Choiseul was called to the head of affairs; a man of considerable ability, by whom they were openly protected.49 Their views were likewise supported by Laverdy, controllergeneral in 1764, and by Terray, controller of finances in 1769.50 The procureur-general, Gilbert des Voisins, was a Jansenist ;51 so also was one of his successors, Chauvelin ;52 and so was the advocate-general Pelletier de Saint-Fargeau;53 and so too was Camus, the well-known advocate of the clergy.54 Turgot, the greatest statesman of the age, is said to have embraced the same opinions;55 while Necker, who on two different occasions possessed almost supreme power, was notoriously a rigid Calvinist. To this may be added, that not only Necker, but also Rousseau, to whom a large share in causing the Revolution is justly ascribed, were born in Geneva, and drew their earliest ideas from that great nursery of the Calvinistic theology.

In such a state of things as this, it was impossible that a body like the Jesuits should hold their ground. They were the last defenders of authority and tradition, and it was natural that they should fall in an age when statesmen were sceptics, and theologians were Calvinists. Even the people had already marked them for destruction; and when Damiens, in 1757, attempted to assassinate the king, it was generally believed that they were the instigators of the act. This we now know to be false; but the existence of such a rumour is evidence of the state of the popular mind. At all events, the doom of the Jesuits was fixed. In April, 1761, parliament ordered their constitutions to

56

47 On the strength of the Jansenists in the parliament of Paris, see Tocqueville, Règne de Louis XV, vol. i. p. 352, vol. ii. p. 176; Flassan, Diplomatie, vol. vi. p. 486; Mém. de Georgel, vol. ii. p. 262; Mém. de Bouillé, vol. i. p. 67; Palmer's Treatise on the Church, vol. i. pp. 327, 328.

4 Lav allée, Hist. des Français, vol. iii. p. 439.

49 Soulavie, Règne de Louis XVI, vol. i. pp. 31, 145.

50 Tocqueville, Règne de Louis XV, vol. ii. p. 385; Euvres de Voltaire, vol. liv.

p. 275; Mém. de Georgel, vol. i. pp. 49-51.

51 Duvernet, Vie de Voltaire, p. 90.

52

Lacretelle, XVIII Siècle, vol. ii. p. 119; Lavallée, vol. iii. p.

63 Mem. de Georgel, vol. i. p. 57.

477.

4 La Fayette, Mém. vol. ii. p. 53; Dumont, Souvenirs, p. 154; Georgel, vol. ii. p. 353, vol. iii. p. 10.

65 Soulavie, Règne de Louis XVI, vol. iii. p. 137.

56 "The Jesuits are charged by the vulgar as promoters of that attempt." Letter from Stanley, written in 1761, in Chatham Correspond. vol. ii. p. 127. Compare Campan, Mem. de Marie Antoinette, vol. iii. pp. 19, 21; Sismondi, Hist. des Franç. vol. xxix. pp. 111, 227.

be laid before them.57 In August, they were forbidden to receive novices, their colleges were closed, and a number of their most celebrated works were publicly burned by the common hangman.58 Finally, in 1762, another edict appeared, by which the Jesuits were condemned without even being heard in their own defence; their property was directed to be sold, and their order secularized; they were declared "unfit to be admitted into a well-governed country," and their institute and society were formally abolished.60

Such was the way in which this great society, long the terror of the world, fell before the pressure of public opinion. What makes its fall the more remarkable, is, that the pretext which was alleged to justify the examination of its constitutions, was one so slight, that no former government would have listened to it for a single moment. This immense spiritual corporation was actually tried by a temporal court for ill faith in a mercantile transaction, and for refusing to pay a sum of money said to be due ! The most important body in the Catholic church, the spiritual leaders of France, the educators of her youth, and the confessors of her kings, were brought to the bar, and sued in their collective capacity, for the fraudulent repudiation of a common debt !62 So marked was the predisposition of affairs, that it was not found necessary to employ for the destruction of the Jesuits any of those arts by which the popular mind is commonly inflamed. The charge upon which they were sentenced, was not that they had plotted against the state; nor that they had corrupted the public morals; nor that they wished to subvert religion. These were the accusations which were brought in the seventeenth century, and which suited the genius of that age. But in the eighteenth century, all that was required was some trifling accident, that might serve as a pretence to justify what the nation had already determined. To ascribe, therefore, this great event to the bankruptcy of a trader, or the intrigues of a mistress, is to confuse the cause of an act with the pretext

57 Lavallée, Hist. des Français, vol. iii. p. 476. Flassan, Diplomatie Franç. vol. vi. p. 491.

69 "Sans que les accusés eussent été entendus." Lavallée, vol. iii. p. 477. "Pas un seul n'a été entendu dans leur cause." Barruel sur l'Histoire du Jacobinisme, vol. ii. p. 264.

Lavallée, iii. p. 477; Flassan, vi. pp. 504, 505; Sismondi, xxix. p. 234; and the letters written by Diderot, who, though he was in Paris at the time, gives rather an incomplete account, Mem. de Diderot, vol. ii. pp. 127, 130-132.

Flassan, Hist. de la Diplomatie, vol. vi. pp. 486-488.

62 "Enfin ils furent mis en cause, et le parlement de Paris eut l'étonnement et la joie de voir les jésuites amenés devant lui comme de vils banqueroutiers." Lacretelle, XVIII Siècle, vol. ii. p. 252. "Condemned in France as fraudulent traders." Schlosser's Eighteenth Century, vol. iv. p. 451.

63 Several writers attribute the destruction of the Jesuits to the exertions of Madame de Pompadour!

under which the act is committed. In the eyes of the men of the eighteenth century, the real crime of the Jesuits was, that they belonged to the past rather than to the present, and that by defending the abuses of ancient establishments, they obstructed the progress of mankind. They stood in the way of the age, and the age swept them from its path. This was the real cause of their abolition: a cause not likely to be perceived by those writers, who, under the guise of historians, are only collectors of the prattle and gossip of courts; and who believe that the destinies of great nations can be settled in the ante-chambers of ministers, and in the councils of kings.

64

After the fall of the Jesuits, there seemed to be nothing remaining which could save the French church from immediate destruction. The old theological spirit had been for some time declining, and the clergy were suffering from their own decay even more than from the attacks made upon them. The advance of knowledge was producing in France the same results as those which I have pointed out in England; and the increasing attractions of science drew off many illustrious men, who in a preceding age would have been active members of the spiritual profession. That splendid eloquence, for which the French clergy had been remarkable, was now dying away, and there were no longer heard the voices of those great orators, at whose bidding the temples had formerly been filled." Massillon was the last of that celebrated race who had so enthralled the mind, and the magic of whose fascination it is even now hard to withstand. He died in 1742; and after him the French clergy possessed no eminent men of any kind, neither thinkers, nor orators, nor writers. Nor did there seem the least possibility of their recovering their lost position. While society was advancing, they were receding. All the sources of their power were dried up. They had no active leaders; they had lost the confidence of government; they had forfeited the respect of the people; they had become a mark for the gibes of the age."7

66

67

64 Choiseul is reported to have said of the Jesuits: tous les autres corps religieux tomberont d'eux-mêmes." isme, vol. i. p. 63.

"leur éducation détruite, Barruel, Hist. du Jacobin

65 In 1771, Horace Walpole writes from Paris that the churches and convents were become so empty, as to "appear like abandoned theatres destined to destruction;" and this he contrasts with his former experience of a different state of things. Walpole's Letters, vol. v. p. 310, edit. 1840.

"So low had the talents of the once illustrious church of France fallen, that in the latter part of the eighteenth century, when Christianity itself was assailed, not one champion of note appeared in its ranks; and when the convocation of the clergy, in 1770, published their famous anathema against the dangers of unbelief, and offered rewards for the best essays in defence of the Christian faith, the productions called forth were so despicable that they sensibly injured the cause of religion." Alison's Hist. of Europe, vol. i. pp. 180, 181.

67 In 1766, the Rev. William Cole writes to Alban Butler: "I travelled to Paris

It does, at first sight, seem strange that, under these circumstances, the French clergy should have been able, for nearly thirty years after the abolition of the Jesuits, to maintain their standing, so as to interfere with impunity in public affairs.6 The truth, however, is, that this temporary reprieve of the ecclesiastical order was owing to that movement which I have already noticed, and by virtue of which the French intellect, during the latter half of the eighteenth century, changed the ground of its attack, and, directing its energies against political abuses, neglected in some degree those spiritual abuses to which its attention had been hitherto confined. The result was, that in France the government enforced a policy which the great thinkers had indeed originated, but respecting which they were becoming less eager. The most eminent Frenchmen were beginning their attacks upon the state, and in the heat of their new warfare they slackened their opposition to the church. But in the mean time, the seeds they had sown germinated in the state itself. So rapid was the march of affairs, that those anti-ecclesiastical opinions which, a few years earlier, were punished as the paradoxes of designing men, were now taken up and put into execution by senators and ministers. The rulers of France carried into effect principles which had hitherto been simply a matter of theory; and thus it happened, as is always the case, that practical statesmen only apply and work out ideas which have long before been suggested by more advanced thinkers.

Hence it followed, that at no period during the eighteenth century did the speculative classes and the practical classes thoroughly combine against the church: since, in the first half of the century, the clergy were principally assailed by the literature, and not by the government; in the latter half of the century, by the government, and not by the literature. Some of the circumstances of this singular transition have been already stated, and I hope clearly brought before the mind of the reader. I now purpose to complete the generalization, by proving that a corresponding change was taking place in all other branches of inquiry; and that, while in the first period attention was chiefly directed towards mental phenomena, it was in the second period through Lille and Cambray in their public voitures, and was greatly scandalized and amazed at the open and unreserved disrespect, both of the trading and military people, for their clergy and religious establishment. When I got to Paris, it was much worse." Ellis's Original Letters, second series, vol. iv. p. 485. See also Walpole's Letters to Lady Ossory, vol. ii. p. 513, edit. 1848; and the complaint made at Besançon in 1761, in Lepan, Vie de Voltaire, p. 113.

68 And also to retain their immense property, which, when the Revolution occurred, was estimated at 80,000,000l. English money, bringing in a yearly revenue of "somewhat under 75,000,000 francs." Alison's Europe, vol. i. p. 183, vol. ii. p. 20, vol. xiv. pp. 122, 123.