The more I consider Ganganelli's rescript, the more am I surprised at the pitiful attempts made to lay down something like an apology for injustice, and the more am I disgusted with its want of principle. It opens with a long narration {105} of the suppression of various small religious associations by ancient popes, but it leaves us quite in the dark as to the justice or injustice of those several suppressions. It informs us, that several complaints had been made, at several times, to several popes, of the Jesuits; but it omits to tell us, that those complaints had always been either rejected, or refuted, or disregarded, by those several popes, whose public acts attest that they were, one and all, friends and supporters of the society[45]. The brief then recites the _jus_, or leading maxim, on which the whole procedure hinges, and which, in spite of {106} the Roman canon, recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, solves the pope's first difficulty, or scruple, of punishing without trial: it is this; that _the slow and fallible method of proceeding before courts of justice must be avoided_; that _reliance must be placed_ WHOLLY _on that plenitude of power, which popes possess in so eminent a degree, as vicars of Christ upon earth, and as sovereign moderators of the Christian republic_; and that _regular orders, which they propose to suppress_, ought not to be allowed _the faculty of producing any arguments in their defence, or of clearing themselves from the heavy accusations brought against them_. These are the words of the brief, as given by sir John in the translation of it in the Appendix to his Speech; in other words, _the accused may be punished without being heard_. This requires no comment; every British heart will suggest a just one.