she and her two successors have avowed to the world. These are, the duty of providing for their catholic subjects suitable ministers and teachers; their knowledge {89} that the Jesuits of White Russia are such; their abhorrence of the injustice, which would strip them of their property, of their civil state and profession, and abolish their canonical existence, without any proof of crime or misdemeanour; and, finally, their royal word and faith pledged to maintain inviolably the _status quo_ of the catholic religion and its ministers, as settled in the _pacta conventa_ of the cession of White Russia to their dominion[35]. These motives {90} have something in them honourable, generous, and dignified. I revere the empress, who, acting upon them, could at once read a lesson of justice to other monarchs, and rescue from destruction a remnant of the persecuted society. Instead of attributing to her the paltry spirit _de narguer_, I will, with sir John's permission, apply to her the praise which Cicero addressed to Cæsar, in his oration for Marcellus: "Nobilissimam familiam, jam ad paucos redactam, pene ab interitu vindicasti!" Sir John will not refuse her this compliment, when he discovers the extraordinary inaccuracy into which he has been betrayed by his informer. He asserts[36], that Catherine "secured the tractability of these {91} restless men by the _sine qua non_ of the residence of their general, _a subject_, within the state." It is true, that their general could not conveniently reside in any other state; but my information emboldens me to affirm, that no restraint whatever was laid upon the Jesuits, in the election of their generals; that they have already elected five in Russia, all of whom have been _foreigners_. The three first were Poles, of whom one, named by sir John, F. Carew, was of British extraction. Their late general, Gruber, was an Austrian; the present superior is a Prussian, and is actually expected at Rome.