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of Ireland, nearly two years (i. e. in July 1811,) before you, Sir John, first opened your Catholic commission to denounce the Jesuits, on the 17th of May, 1813, and had published the slight tribute of gratitude to the body, from which I received my education, above 18 years before that time (i. e. in June, 1795), it appears singular, that I was not also connected with your speech and notice to the House on that day. You however having received my letter, which was published in Dublin in February 1814, without caring to utter a syllable about it, that could excite an interest, or a wish even of curiosity in others to see your portrait, took occasion of pressing upon the House, a batch of unfounded calumny, malicious insinuation, and false assertion concerning me. These specific refutations of these general charges will close have stronger reasons for doing it, than those of my labour. I self-defence.

In justice, Sir, to your consistency, and in order to prevent a repetition of the complaint you made in the House of Commons, on the 21st of November, 1814, «* that the minds of the people of Ireland « were kept in a state of the darkest ignorance,

and that I had drawn an unfair picture of the << character and objects of the order of the Jesuits, « etc.; and with a view to clear away some of that dark ignorance, by shewing the Irish what you actually were, when Mr. Butler congratulated you upon your having made yourself one of us, I shall with your leave repeat two sentences of letter to you. They will acquit me of any intenfirst tion to keep the Irish in the darkest state of ignomy rance. (1) I undertake not to examine or defend

*Times newspaper for 22d of November, 1814. (1) Hist. Let. to Sir J. C. Hippisley, p.

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<< the cause of the Jesuits: but after your pub«lic announce of existing Catholic fears of them, « I am called upon as the Historian of Ireland, << upon which these fears are intended or expected << to act, to make some historical references, to the. << number and quality of the enemies of their order, « out of which sprung the fears proclaimed in « Parliament. The fathers' observance of the rules «and institutes of their order, must necessarily << excite the enmity, hatred, and dread, not only of the systematic opposers of Catholicity, but of all secret and professed impugners of the jurisdic«<tional supremacy of the Roman Pontiff, all de<< riders of revelation, all scoffers at religious practices. Hence in common hatred to Jesuit«ism, the Jansenist joined the Philosophist, and << on that ground, like Pilate and Herod, they were made friends together: for before they were at << enmity between themselves.»> Did not your consistency rather recoil at the knowledge thus attempted to be infused into the Irish, than at the dark state of ignorance, in which you complain, they had been kept upon these matters?

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There is, as you Sir John are well aware of from your professional habits, a species of deception practised upon the unsuspicious and the unwary, which frequently injures third persons, more than indictable attacks upon their person, property, or reputation. And our Courts, which give equitable relief in such cases, usually stamp every such insi dious attempt with one or the other of these two badges; suppressio veri, or suggestio falsi. You will bear in mind, that I am not now maintaining the orthodoxy of my positions or doctrines, as you forced me to prove the Catholicity of my principles and opinions upon the construction of oaths: but I am enquiring how far you were fair, candid, and

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warrantable in charging me with historical inaccuracy, on account of what I have said in my first letter to you upon the order of Jesuits. You have long laboured under a corroding passion for convicting me of historical infidelity and inaccuracy. Your letters to Lord Fingal, which appear to have been written in or about the month of December, 1812, in which Mr. Butler favored you with his instructive letter, and congratulated you upon your conversion, directly, though generally charges me with misleading* the well-meaning and unsuspecting public of Ireland by the misrepresenta«tions, which abound in the multiplied pages << the Continuation of my History of Ireland, and my Historical Letter to Columbanus.» To follow up your attack, you gave your auditors to understand, and of course all the readers of the reports of your speeches, that as the Historian of Ireland, I had swelled my ponderous volumes with numerous inaccuracies and falsehoods concerning the Jesuits. No other specific inaccuracy is even hinted at. Before I refute the specific charges, I must once more press upon you, this singular fact, that in the multiplied pages of my History of Ireland, or in my Historical Letter to Columbanus, there is not a single word even of oblique reference to the order of Jesuits, or of their tenets, or of their character, or of their objects, of which you specifically said on the 21st of last November, I had not drawn a fair picture. Even the French Moniteur, in favoring his countrymen with the substance of your speech on that day, clears me of the old imputation of chusing to put verbal inaccuracies of expression into your mouth from the loose report of some

* Hist. Let. to Sir J. C. Hippisley, p. 61.

newspaper. The Moniteur of the 29th of Noyember, 1814, remarked, that your former mention of the order of Jesuits, « N'a fait qu'y exciter le rire ; <<< il veut dire la bulle pour le retablissement des «Jesuites. On s'est étrangement abusé sur ce point «en Irelande. Un homme, qu'on appeloit l'Histo« rien de ce pays, mais qui est plus remarquable « pour le volume de ces productions, que pour «<leurs fidélités, a dit que les Jesuites continuoient

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à jouir de tous leurs privileges en Russie: C'étoit à un prêtre Grec, que l'instruction reli«gieuse etoit confiée, et qu'il est defendu aux Je«suites de se mêler le moins du monde dans les «matières religieuses.» It is unquestionably clear, that every Frenchman reading this article in the Moniteur, from his Most Christian Majesty in son, down to the shoe-black on the Pont-Neuf, would obviously suppose, that I, whom some have called the Historian of Ireland, had in my history of that country, not only treated of the Jesuits' establishments in Russia, but that I had said something at variance, with your assertion of the Russian youth, who were brought up in the Jesuits' colleges, being under the spiritual direction of their own Greek Priests. Here is both suppressio veri, and suggestio falsi, with reference to this whole subject. << I can state (say you, according to the « Times newspaper), from my own authority, that every college of Jesuits was provided with a «Member of the Greek Church.» What What your authority for stating that fact may be, I am not curious to enquire. I find a transcendent ground for it, in the open, firm, and honorable orthodoxy of the fathers of the society, of whom I told you very correctly in my first letter, that the Court of St. Petersburgh never entertained either Protestant fears or Catholic fears and I gave such latitude to

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the word Protestant, as to let in every description of Christians, who protest against any part of the doctrine, and the entire submission to the spiritual supremacy of the Church of Rome. I explicitly said, « The Court of St. Petersburgh has unceasingly « persevered in countenancing, encouraging, and supporting the society. At this moment the rising generation of the Russian noblesse receive << education from the fathers of the society at the capital, and in other principal towns of the Em«pire. The fathers of the society, who were ever renowned for teaching the Roman Catholic Religion in its utmost purity, must (even with your consistency, Sir John,) necessarily have told the Government, that if they chose their youth to be instructed in what the fathers were well known to consider the errors of the Greek Church, they must supply them with instructors of their own Church: for on no consideration could they lend themselves to the teaching and encouraging of trine, than that of the Church of Rome. In the any other docsummary sketch I gave of the establishment of the Jesuits in Russia, I entered not into this detail, which you have now forced from me. But to prove the fidelity and accuracy of my representation, I thus addressed you in that first letter; which, as you condescended to say so much upon the subject, it would have been candid to have disclosed to your auditors. «< Imagine, not, Sir John, because Rus«sia has no Protestant fears on that head, that it << is, because the Greek Church approximates a more, than the Protestant Church of England does to the Roman Catholic Church. The Greek Church of Russia is as fastidious of her independent prerogative, of not owing obedience to the «See of Rome, as you are. She is as jealous the head of Proselytism, as your Church. So upon

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