And what then can engage me to meddle with your final observations and inferences? Certainly not the apprehension, that men of sense and knowledge will ever acquiesce in them; but because they are all intended to feed some of the worst passions, that canker the human heart, to gratify disappointed anger, fretful jealousy, and revengeful spite. That these sour passions are apt to rankle in narrow hearts is not a novelty. I have caught them, in late years, venting themselves against your enemies the Jesuits, through newspapers and other prints, in tales nearly as absurd and fictitious, as was the alarming story in the reign of Charles II, of thirty thousand pilgrims and lay brothers, embodied at St. Andero, ready to invade old England under the conduct of the general of the Jesuits. Now your monstrous stories coming upon the back of these fables, must lead every man of sense to conclude, that not the consideration of public security, but the accomplishment of some private view must have prompted this wantonness of slander. But {320} supposing for an instant, that all and each of your random accusations of ancient Jesuits were as true, as all and each are undeniably false; allowing that your columns in the Times could arrest a reader, unacquainted with continental history, in a state of hesitation and doubt; yet he must at least say: "These bad men, like the ancient giants, have been exterminated, they have long since disappeared, we have survived their criminal practices, why is the alarm bell sounded in the present times?"--"But," cries Laicus, "there once was a body of English Jesuits, and, during the whole term of their existence, 'our fathers spent restless nights and uneasy days. Dr. Sherlocke, living under dread of popery and arbitrary power, could enjoy no repose, when every morning threatened to usher in the last dawn of England's liberty.' I trust this quotation will not be without its use[117]." "Yes, these English Jesuits laid upon us '_a yoke, which was too heavy for {321} our fathers to bear_,' and the pope is again trying to fasten it upon our shoulders." &c.[118]