Go into India, Persia, and Tartary, and you will meet with the same toleration and the same tranquillity. Peter the Great encouraged all kinds of religions throughout his vast empire; trade and agriculture have been gainers by it, and no injury ever happened therefrom to the body politic. We do not find that the Chinese government, during the course of four thousand years that it has existed, has ever adopted any other religion than that of the Noachides, which consists in the simple worship of one God; and yet it tolerates the superstitions of Fo, and that of a multitude of bonzes; which might be productive of dangerous consequences did not the wisdom of the tribunals keep them within proper bounds. It is true that the great Yong-T-Chin, the most wise and magnanimous of all the emperors of China, drove the Jesuits out of his kingdom; but this was not because that prince himself was non-tolerant, but, on the contrary, because the Jesuits were so. They themselves, in their letters, have given us the speech the emperor made to them on that occasion: “I know,” said he, “that your religion admits not of toleration; I know how you have behaved in the Manilas and in Japan; you deceived my father, but think not to deceive me in the same manner.” And if we read the whole of the conversation which he deigned to hold with them, we must confess him to be the wisest and most clement of all princes. How could he indeed, with any consistency, keep in his kingdom European philosophers, who, under the pretence of teaching the use of thermometers and eolipiles, had found means to debauch a prince of the blood? But what would this emperor have said had he read our histories, and had he been acquainted with the times of the League and the Gunpowder Plot?