Page:The spiritual venality of Rome.djvu/26

3 point most essential in such inqniries isj to describe with precision the documents and an* thorities prodncedj and to establish their an* thentidty by such evidence, as not the most practised and de:&terous artifice^ nor the most shameless connter-asseverationj which are both to be expected, can elude or demolish. And in this point, all the preceding writers, although entitled to the praise of having communicated mnch valnable information, have yet, in va- rious degrees, egregiously and unaccountably failed. The first author, who may be said not to have £uled, is Prosper Marchand^ in his Die- tionaire Historique, Sec. published ia 1759, under the word Tax», &c« : and that article certainly exhibits the fullest, the most correct, and, in all respects^ the best and most satis- factory, account to be found, of the extraor- dinary documents under consideration* This praise has not been wrested from it even by the edition of Du f inet's Taxe published at Paris so lately as 1820, and which, instead of ad- vancing in information, has actuaUy retro- graded, and left ns more ignorant than we were when Marchand wrote. It were well if defects alone were chargeable npon this reprint. Its