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Rh similar terms to Voltaire. Speaking of Pope Clement XIV., he says: "For my own part I have no reason to complain of him; he leaves me my dear Jesuits, whom they are persecuting everywhere. I will save the precious seed, for those who should wish to cultivate a plant so rare." On May 15th, 1775, he wrote to d'Alembert: "In their misfortune I see in them nothing but scholars whose place in the education of youth can hardly be supplied by others." Again on Aug. 5, 1775: "For the good Jesuit Fathers I have a d— tenderness, not as far as they are monks but as educators and scholars, whose services are useful to civil society." Now, if the Jesuits were dangerous to the welfare of the state, as their enemies make them, how strange that the Atheist on the Prussian throne, the shrewdest and most keen-sighted monarch of his time, should have failed to see it? But he was not the man to let himself be influenced by silly prejudices.

The second ruler of Europe who endeavored to protect the Society was Catharine II., Empress of Russia. In 1783 she wrote to Pope Pius VI. "that she was resolved to maintain these priests for the welfare of her states against any power, whatsoever it was." In the same year the Russian court in a note to Mgr. Archetti, Papal Nuncio to Poland, thus expressed its sentiments on the Jesuits: "The Roman Catholics of the Russian Empire, having given unequivocal proofs of their loyalty to the Empress, have thereby acquired a right to the confirmation of their former privileges. Of this number is the instruction of youth, which has heretofore been committed to the