I will not pretend to go numerically through the catalogue presented in the pamphlet. {33} Publications infinitely multiplied deluged Europe for the purpose of overwhelming the Jesuits; an infinity of references, therefore, if not of authorities, remains at the service of their enemies, and it would be useless and tiresome, if not impossible, to wade through them. I shall principally notice those on which the conspirator before me places his bitterest reliance, such as are most inveterate, most profuse and blackening in their accusations; touching slightly, however, or not at all, on those sufficiently refuted in the succeeding Letters. To refute all that was printed against the devoted society of Jesus would require a complete history of the destruction of the Order[13], but within the limits of this brief exposition it is not possible to go very deep into the scrutiny of the malice, and of the means resorted to for the purpose of effecting it. To remove some of the thick, poisonous weeds, which mantle the surface of the subject, so as to show the body clear {34} beneath, is the extent of my present undertaking; and, if I appear concise, one consideration is in my favour, namely, that imputations advanced by a thousand different writers are not _multiplied_ but _repeated_, and that reverberations of falsehood are still falsehood. We have already seen, that even the powers and ingenuousness of a Robertson have been unable to extract from them the voice of truth. France has produced the greatest number of writers against the society. The speeches and publications of those in the times of the league, as I have said, furnished the original matter to the authors of the _Comptes Rendus_; the theme of regicide, the tales of the Jesuits Varade, Gueret, Guignard, the whole guilt of the league, &c., to which more recent matter, particularly lax doctrines of morality, has been added. This is all collected in the _Extraits des Assertions_, a work evidently replete with studied fabrications, as is shown by Beaumont, archbishop of Paris, Montesquiou, bishop of Sarlat, and in the {35} _Re__ponse aux Assertions_. I believe, that this _Reponse_ and the _Apologie de l'Institut_ are the only works written in defence of the society, which the Jesuits publicly avowed. These are unanswerable, and should be referred to by historians.