y disapproves, but forbids all those of his order, under very severe
penalties, to teach or maintain it lawful, under what pretext of tyranny
soever, to attempt upon the persons of kings and princes." {148}

ABBE RAYNAL.

To the foregoing testimonies, let us add that of one of the bitterest
enemies of Christianity. "The magnificence of the ceremonies," says Raynal,
"attracts the Indians to the churches, where they find pleasure and piety
united. There it is that religion is amiable, and it is at first in her
ministers that she there gains love. Nothing equals the purity of the
morals, the mild and tender zeal, the paternal solicitude, of the Jesuits
of Paraguay. Every pastor is truly the father, as well as the director of
his parishioners. There his authority is not felt, for he orders,
prohibits, and punishes, only what is punished, prohibited, and ordered by
the religion, which all of them, as well as he, worship and cherish."--"A
government in which nobody is idle, nobody works to excess; in which food
is wholesome, plentiful, and impartially partaken by all the citizens, who
are conveniently lodged, conveniently clothed; in {149} which old persons,
widows, orphans, and the sick, find a succour unknown in any other part of
the globe; in which every one marries according to inclination, and without
interest; and where large families are a comfort, without a possibility of
becoming a burthen; in which the debauchery inseparable from idleness, that
equally corrupts opulence and poverty, never accelerates the degradation,
or rather the decline of human life; in which factitious passions are never
excited, and well-regulated desires never thwarted; in which the advantages
of commerce are enjoyed; without danger of contagion from the vices
attendant on luxury; in which well-stored magazines, and mutual gratuitous
succours among nations, rendered brothers by the same religion, afford a
secure resource against the want that the uncertainty or inclemency of the
seasons may produce; in which criminal justice has never been under the
melancholy necessity of condemning a single criminal to death, to ignominy,
or to punishment of any duration; and in which the very name of a tax or of
a lawsuit is {150} unknown." Listen, I pray, to this account, from a
quarter so unsuspected, of "the _slavery_ in which the Jesuits held the
Indians of Paraguay, and the _atrocities_ which they exercised there;" for
such is the language of their assa