A TREATISE UPON TOLERATION, &c. CHA P. I. A brief ACCOUNT of the Death of JOHN T CALAS. HE murder of John Calas, committed at Touloufe with the fword of juftice, the 9th of March 1762, is an event, which, on account of its fingularity, calls for the attention of the prefent age, and that of pofterity. We foon forget the croud of victims who have fallen in the courfe of innumerable battles, not only because this is a destiny B a destiny inevitably connected with a life of warfare, but because those who thus fall might also have given death to their enemies, and did not lofe their lives till after having first ftood in their own defence. Where the danger and the advantage are equal, our wonder ceafes, and even pity itself is in fome meafure leffehed; but where the father of an innocent family is delivered up to the fword of error, prejudice, or enthusiasm, where the accused person has no other defence but his confcious virtue; where the arbiters of his destiny have nothing to hazard in putting him to death, but the having been mistaken, and where they may murder with impunity under the fanction of a judicial process; then every one is ready to cry out, every one brings the cafe home to himself, and fees with fear and trembling, that no perfon's life is in safety in a court erected to watch over the lives of the subject; the public unite in demanding vengeance. In this ftrange affair, we find religion, felf-murder and parricide blended. The object of enquiry was, whether a father and a mother had murdered their own fon with a view to please God, and whether a brother had murdered his brother, or a friend his friend; or whether the judges judges had to reproach themselves with having publickly executed an innocent father, or with having acquitted a guilty mother, brother, and friend. John Calas, a person of fixty-eight years of age, had followed the profeffion of a merchant at Toulouse for upwards of forty years, and had always borne the character of a tender parent in his family and neighbourhood: he was himself by religion a proteftant, as was also his wife, and all his children, one fon only excepted, who had abjured herefy, and to whom the father allowed a small annuity; indeed, the good man appeared fo far from being infected with that abfurd zeal, which deftroys the bands of fociety, that he even approved of the converfion of his fon Lewis Calas: he had for above thirty years kept in his house a maid fervant, who was a zealous catholic, and who had brought up all his children. Another of his fons, whofe name was Mark Anthony, was a man of letters, but, at the fame time, of a restless, gloomy, and impetuous difpofition. This young man finding, that he had no profpect of getting into business as a merchant, for which indeed he was very unfit, B 2 nor |