After all, I have good grounds to know, that sir John is misinformed respecting the source of the gift of thirty thousand pounds to the new seminary: _no money has been recently transmitted from the society here to Ireland_. The sum, on which the new house of education is rising, _was not secured by the Jesuits from the wreck of the society_: it is, strictly, the _private property_ of a free Briton. This, I am informed, on good authority, is the fact; but, supposing it had been saved by the Jesuits from the ruin of their continental establishments, from which they were so cruelly turned adrift, and plundered by despots, because they were Englishmen; nay, supposing every guinea of it had been coined at the mint of _king Nicolas of Paraguay_, could this authorize sir John to assume the despotic {119} principle of a foreign minister, a Pombal, a Choiseul, and to decide at once, _de son chef_, in the land of liberty, that his unoffending fellow subjects, who, under the safeguard of the laws, are prosecuting an honourable profession, shall again be stripped and subjected to arbitrary confiscation? If the Ganganellian maxim, that "the accused may be plundered without being heard," be tolerated at Rome, in the "_plenitude of power_, which the pope possesses, as moderator of the Christian republic," it is far otherwise in this happy land, where men, no longer persecuted for their religious opinions, maintaining their _sworn_ allegiance to their king, are sure for their persons and property to find safety in the laws, and protection from the sovereign. I have spoken of sir John Hippisley's opinions freely; I trust I have not done it coarsely. I was greatly surprised to find him taking the part he does. Of Clement XIV I feel inclined to speak more harshly than I have. I remember being pleased with his Letters when I was a {120} boy, upon the same principle that I was pleased with the meeting of the _Etats Generaux_, in 1789, at Versailles, where I was a spectator: a philosophical pope, and a philosophical senate, were mental _bon bons_, adapted to the puerile taste of my understanding; but, grown old, I have no relish for either. Ganganelli degraded the tiara, and helped to prepare the French revolution.