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Benevento by Naples, in order to enforce a com- BOOK pliance, persisted in a peremptory and positive refusal.

A very remarkable edict having been published by the infant duke of Parma, virtually annihilating the authority of the papal see in his dominions, the Roman pontiff issued, January 1767, a BULL against the duke, in terms which the haughtiest of his predecessors could scarcely have exceeded. By this instrument the pope claimed to himself the sovereignty of the duchy of Parma, and declared the duke to be only his feudatory. He pronounced, on the authority of the church, and of former decisions of his predecessors, that ecclesiastics are not subject to any temporal power or laic jurisdiction; and that, seeing the duke had been guilty of an infringement of the immunities of the church, he had justly incurred its heaviest censures; and unless he desisted from his rash enterprise, he now gave him warning, "that the sentence of excommunication would be denounced against him, and his dominions laid under an interdict." Nor on the joint application of the courts of France, Spain, and Vienna, would his holiness deign to revoke this decree, or even admit the ambassadors of these powers to an audience. As the common father of the faithful, the pope disclaimed indeed every idea of executing any de

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BOOK cree of the Holy See by the aid of temporal force, XVII. were it in his power. On the contrary, he de

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clared himself ready, after the example of his predecessors, to suffer whatever personal injury might befall him, and to go into exile wherever it might be thought proper to send him, rather than betray the interests of religion and of the church. The Holy See, he added, was not accustomed to revoke its judgments, which were never passed till after the most mature deliberation, and always with the assistance of the Holy Ghost. At length, loaded with years, with grief and infirmities, this arrogant and inflexible pontiff sunk into his grave; and the famous Ganganelli, who assumed the name of Clement XIV. was, after the conclave had sat three months, elected, May 1769, to the vacant chair of St. Peter. The pontificate of Ganganelli was rendered for ever memorable by the abolition of the order of the Jesuits, in virtue of a bull, issued A. D. 1773, charging them with having adopted opinions scandalous, contrary to good morals, and of dangerous import to the church and all christian states.

This pontiff died in the course of the next year (1774), universally beloved and regretted, not without very general suspicion of poison, of which he is said to have been himself previously an strongly apprehensive; but of this no deci

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sive evidence has been produced. He was suc- BOOK ceeded by cardinal Braschi, who took the appellation of Pius VI. Nearly at the same time died Charles Emanuel, king of Sardinia, after a reign of forty-three years. He succeeded to the throne on the resignation of his father in 1730, and governed his dominions with great prudence and felicity. His son, Victor Amadeus, after the acquisition of Corsica by France, perceiving the ascendancy acquired by the house of Bourbon, entered into a strict alliance with the court of Versailles-the princess Clotilda, sister to the king of France, marrying the prince of Piedmont; and the two princesses, daughters of his Sardinian majesty, espousing the counts de Provence and d'Artois, brothers of his most christian majesty.

In the north of Europe Russia still maintained her full ascendancy, and the predominance which she had acquired in the affairs of Poland was opposed not by the glorious ardor of civil liberty, but by a wretched and miserable spirit of religious bigotry; and the majority of the diet, instigated by the BISHOPS, still persisted in refusing to the dissidents, who were chiefly of the Greek church, that liberty of conscience to which they were entitled, not merely by the rights of nature, but by the most express and solemn conventions.

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In the year 1563, a law worthy to be inscribed in letters of gold on a table of adamant was enacted at the diet of Wilna, under the sanction of Sigismund Augustus, the greatest of the Polish monarchs, declaring, "that all those of the equestrian and noble orders, whether of Lithuanian, Polish, or Russian extraction, in every part of his dominions, shall be eligible to all honors, dignities, and trusts, without distinction, or exception, according to his merit, provided he profess the Christian religion." This law, while it continued in force, was productive of the most salutary effects; but the crown of Poland too soon descending to weak and bigoted princes, the oppressions of the dissidents* recommenced in various forms. After many vicissitudes of fortune, by the pacification of Oliva,

*It is observable, that the term dissidents, according to its original import, was not used in Poland as in England, to denote merely the separatists from the national church; but equally comprehended the members of the establishment-all the various sects and professions, Romish, Greek, or Protestant, dissenting reciprocally from the dogmas held by each other. This is the rational and equitable sense affixed to the term in the famous decree of the diet of Wilna. In the pacta conventa framed by the diet assembled after the death of Sigismund Augustus, and which confirmed the prin ciple of toleration in its largest extent, the following clause was inserted, as part of the coronation oath: "I will keep peace among the DISSIDENTS." Henry of Valois, on his

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A. D. 1660, their rights and privileges were at BOOK length completely restored and guaranteed by England, Sweden, and the other high contracting parties to that famous treaty. Nevertheless, under the two last monarchs of the protestant house of Saxony, who, in the genuine spirit of apostacy, were eager to signalize their zeal for the faith they had so recently embraced, Persecution, which had long mourned over her broken wheel, again reared her gorgon crest; and, notwithstanding the wisdom and moderation of the present sovereign, and the powerful intercession of the courts of Berlin, London, and Petersburg, the most severe and unjust edicts passed against them. Conceiving themselves devoted to destruction, they at length flew to arms, and, being supported by the power of Rus

subsequent election, hesitating to signify his assent to the universal toleration recognized and established by the instru ment of government, one of the Polish Palatines cried out, "Unless your majesty confirms this article, you cannot be king of Poland." It is scarcely conceivable, that, after a people had experienced so long the happy effects of a liberal and enlightened policy, it should relapse into that intellectual darkness which has at length terininated in the utter ruin of the Polish name and nation. What a lesson for England! where, during the course of the present inauspicious and unfortunate reign, the spirit of bigotry, of persecution, and intolerance, has made so rapid and alarming a progress!

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