And yet this infamous trash must be noticed, because it is calculated to do harm. I say again, who are you? Tell me, if you dare. If you have written truth, why should you skulk {264} from the light? But, alas! _Omnis, qui male agit, odit lucem._--John iii, 20. I need not ask again, what is your aim? Your two columns plainly tell it. It is not to convey information to discerning men; it is to poison the minds of the undiscriminating vulgar; it is to raise a popular cry, which, in this country, has more than once either intimidated virtuous ministers, or favoured the projects of bad ones. There is, you know it, even in this enlightened nation, a mass of fanaticism and bigotry, which may easily be called into action. If you are forty-five years old, you may remember, that, in 1780, one extravagant religionist made the streets stream with blood, and nearly wrapped the capital in flames. If you have read history, you know that the projectors of the _exclusion bill_ found the profligacy of Titus Oates quite sufficient to raise an enormous ferment throughout the nation, and to procure the legal murder of twenty harmless Jesuits, gentlemen and priests. You distinctly disclaim the {265} merit of novelty. Right: you dare not deviate an inch from the old beaten track of inflammatory calumny and defamation. Your whole tale has been long prepared and fashioned to your hands. Nothing in it is yours, but the inconsistencies, contradictions, and scurrilous language, with which you have pieced it together. It is copied from one or more of the ten thousand libels, which overspread Europe fifty years ago, when the confederate ministers of the catholic courts, the Pombals, the Choiseuls, the Arandas, the Tanuccis, the Caunitzes, the Spinellis, the Marefoschis, &c. had finally determined to assassinate the whole body of the Jesuits. I have read almost every word of your two flimsy columns in the old _Requisitoires_, _Comptes Rendus_, and _Arrêts_ of the French parliaments, from which I traced it to the Jansenists, to the Calvinists, to the _Tuba Magna_, to Scioppius, to Hospinian, to the _Monarchia Solipsorum_, and to the lying _Monita Secreta_: yet this last is the only one of your foul sources, that you have the hardiness to cite, probably because you know it to be {266} the most malicious. It shall be specially noticed hereafter. Now all this was long ago refuted to the satisfaction of dispassionate men: even many of the French parliamentarians saw cause to regret their own deed. I have heard several of their leading men lament it, and some of them fairly acknowledge the _infamy_ of the slander, which their courts had employed to effect it. _Il falloit_ denigrer _les Jesuites; car sans cela, les parlemens n'en seroient jamais venus à bout_, were the words used by the late amiable and learned president Des Brosses in my hearing. But you, Sir, are not content to suck in the black bile of the old Gallic