of religious and moral statutes. The general, as well as the members of the community, is bound by those laws. A general congregation may be assembled, without his consent, and in defiance of him, to make laws against him: and "blind obedience is a sacrifice of passion, not of reason; Jesuits are to obey blindly, only when they see clearly, that they may do so without a crime, nay, without the slightest fault." The obedience which all religious, as well as Jesuits, paid to their chief {86} superior, who generally resided at Rome, was well understood to relate merely to their professional duties. It was first made an object of jealousy, exclusively with regard to the Jesuits, at the time that the parliaments were studying every mode of making them odious; and, before that time, the native country of their general was a matter of indifference. The native country of the pope was never alleged as a motive for rejecting his authority. The obedience of the Jesuits was voluntary; and they knew, from their institute, that it never could supersede the duty which they owed to the government under which they lived. Can sir John adduce a single instance of a Jesuit's betraying the country, or the government, which protected him? The first superiors of the French Jesuits were Spaniards and Italians. The superior of the Venetian Jesuits, during the famous contest between that state and Paul V, was a Frenchman. In friendly consideration for the instructors of his numerous valuable friends, sir John informs {87} the House of Commons, that, though the empress of Russia countenanced the re-organization of the society within her dominions, "it was in a degraded state, to suit the views of her policy;" and, in a note, he informs the world at large, that "a correspondent of great consideration observed, that the empress was well pleased with the opportunity of snapping her fingers (_narguer_) at the courts of Versailles and Madrid, and showing them and the world at large, that she could render the institution tractable by her superior authority and management; that is, that she could tame wild beasts, which _they_ were forced to destroy[34]." It is not for me to {88} divine by what means sir John, or his correspondent, obtained such possession of the secrets of Catherine's mind, as to be able to decide, in the face of the world, that her conduct, in saving the Jesuits, was guided by petty motives of private interest, and especially the secret desire _de narguer_, in plain English to jeer and jibe, to fleer and flout, the French and Spanish courts; but, if so, it evidently supposes some previous cause of dissatisfaction with those courts. What that cause was it is for sir John or his correspondent to state: to the generality of men, I believe, it remains a mystery. I am ignorant of any such cause, and, being in the class of ordinary observers, I ascribe the conduct of the empress to the more generous motives, which