1816.] Dr. John Rolison. 253 
nature, that it is difficult to persuade one’s self, that the original 
documents from which Mr. Robison drew up his narrative were 
entitled to all the confidence which he reposed in them. 
I do not mean to question the general fact, that there did exist 
in Germany a society having the vanity to assume the name just 
mentioned, and the presumption or the simplicity to believe that it 
could reform the world. In a land where the tendency to the 
romantic and the mysterious seems so general, that even philosophy 
and science have not escaped the infection, and in states where 
there is much that requires amendment, it is not wonderful if asso- 
ciations have been formed for redressing grievances, and reforming 
both religion and government. Some men, truly philanthropic, 
and others, merely profligate, may have joined in this combination ; 
the former, very erroneously supposing, that the interests of truth 
and of mankind may be advanced by cabal and intrigue: and the 
latter, more wisely concluding, that these are engines well adapted 
to promote the dissemination of error, and the schemes of private 
aggrandisement, An ex-Jesuit may have been the author of this 
plan, and whether he belonged to the former or the latter class, 
may have chosen for the model of the new arrangement, those 
institutions which he knew from experience to be well adapted for 
exercising a strong but secret influence in the direction of human 
affairs. 
In all this there is nothing incredible; but the same, I think, 
cannot be asserted when the particulars are examined in detail. It 
is extremely difficult, as has already been remarked, for a foreigner 
in such circumstances as Mr. Robison’s to avoid delusion, or to 
determine between the different kinds of testimony of which he 
must make use. With me, who have no access to the original 
documents, and if I had, who have neither leisure nor inclination 
to examine them, an opinion can only be formed from the internal 
evidence, that is, from the nature of the facts, and the style in 
which they are recorded. The style of the works from which Mr. 
Robison composed his narrative is not such as to inspire confidence ; 
for, wherever it is quoted, it is that of an angry and inflated 
invective. The facts themselves are altogether singular, arguing a 
depravity quite unexampled in all the votaries of i//wmination. 
From the perusal of the whole, it is impossible not to conclude, 
that the alarm excited by the French Revolution, had produced in 
Mr. Robison a degree of credulity which was not natural to him. 
The suspicion with which he seems to view every person on the 
continent, to whom the name of a philosopher can be applied, and 
the terms of reproach and contempt to which, whether as indivi- 
duals or as bodies, they are always subjected, make it evident that 
the narrative is not impartial, and that the author was prepared, in 
certain cases, to admit the slightest presumption as clear and irre- 
fragable evidence. When, indeed, he speaks of such obscure 
men as composed the greater pan of the supposed conspirators, we 
have no direct means of determining in what degree he has been 
