(William Thomas), commonly called the Abbé Raynal, was educated among the Jesuits, and had become one of the order. The learning of that Society is universally universally known, as well as the happy talents which its superiors possessed, of affixing to each member his proper employment. Raynal, however, after having acquired among them a taste for literature and science, had probably become refractory, for he was expelled from the order; and the cause of his expulsion, according to the Abbé Barruel, was his impiety.

With the real cause of his expulsion M. Barruel is surely much better acquainted than we can pretend to be; but we have a strong suspicion that his impieties had not then reached farther than to call in question the supreme authority of the church; for our author himself assures us, that he did not utter his atrocious declarations against Christianity till he had ceased to be a member of the order of Jesuits. He then associated himself with Voltaire, D'Alembert, and Diderot, and was by them employed to furnish the theological articles for the Encyclopédie. But though his religious opinions were certainly lax, and his moral principles very exceptionable, he could not even then be what, in a Protestant country, would be deemed a man remarkable for impiety; for he employed the Abbé Yvon, whom M. Barruel calls an odd metaphysician, but an inoffensive and upright man, to write the articles which he was engaged to furnish. In the conducting of this transaction, he shewed, indeed, that he possessed not a proper sense of honour; for he paid poor Yvon with twenty-five louis d'ors for writing theological articles, for which he received himself six times that sum. This trick was discovered, Raynal was disgraced, and compelled to pay up the balance to Abbé Yvon; but though he had thus thrown himself to be without honour, it is difficult to believe that he had yet proceeded so far as to blaspheme Christ, since he had employed a Christian divine to supply his place in the Encyclopédie.

His first work of eminence, and that indeed upon which his fame is chiefly built, is his "Political and Philosophical History of the European Settlements in the East and West Indies." That this history is written in an animated style, and that it contains many just reflections, both political and philosophical, is known to all Europe; for it has been translated into every European language. Its beauties, however, are deformed by many sentiments that are irreligious, and by some that are impure. It was followed, we think, in 1782, by a small tract entitled "The Revolution of America," in which the author pleads the cause of the revolted colonists with a degree of zeal, censures the conduct of the British government with a keenness of satire, and displays a knowledge of the principles and intrigues of the different factions which at that period divided the English nation, that surely was not natural to the impartial pen of a philosophic foreigner. Hence he has been supposed to have been incited to the undertaking, and to have been furnished with part of his materials, by that desperate faction which uniformly opposed the measures of Lord North, and secretly fomented the rebellion in America. Be this as it may, he propagated, both in this tract and in his history, a number of licentious opinions respecting government and religion, of which he lived to regret the consequences.

A prosecution was instituted against him by the French government on account of his history of the East and West Indies; but it was conducted with so little severity, that he had sufficient time to retire to the dominions of the King of Prussia, who afforded him the protection he solicited, although his Majesty's character was treated by the author in his book with no great degree of veneration. Raynal also experienced the kindness of the Empress of Russia; and it is not a little remarkable of this singular personage, that, although he was always severe in discoursing the characters of princes, yet the most despotic among them heaped upon him many marks of favour and generosity. The Abbé also received a very unusual mark of respect from a British House of Commons. It was once intimated to the speaker that Raynal was a spectator in the gallery. The business was immediately suspended, and the stranger conducted to a more convenient and honourable situation. How different was the conduct of Dr. Johnson, who, when a friend advanced to him with our author, saying, "Will you give me leave, Doctor, to introduce to you the Abbé Raynal?" turned on his heel, and vociferated, "No, Sir!" We are far from wishing to vindicate the rudeness of the sage; but it was perhaps as proper as the politeness of the House of Commons.

The great trait of Raynal's character was a love of liberty, which, in his earlier writings, he did not properly define; but when he lived to see some of the consequences of this, in the progress of the French Revolution, he made one glorious effort to retrieve his errors. In the month of May 1791, he addressed to the constituent assembly one of the most eloquent, argumentative, and impressive letters that ever was written on any subject; a letter which, if the majority of them had not been intoxicated with their newly acquired consequence, must have given some check to their mad career. After complimenting them upon what they had done, he proceeds thus: "I have long dared to speak to kings of their duty; suffer me now to speak to the people of their errors, and to their representatives of the dangers which threaten us. I am, I own to you, deeply afflicted at the crimes which plunge this empire into mourning. Is it true that I am to look back with horror at myself for being one of those who, by feeling a noble indignation against arbitrary power, may perhaps have furnished arms to licentiousness? Do then religion, the laws, the royal authority, and public order, demand back from philosophy and reason the ties which united them to the grand society of the French nation, as if, by exposing abuses, and teaching the rights of the people and the duties of princes, our criminal efforts had broken those ties? But, no!—never have the bold conceptions of philosophy been represented by us as the first rule for acts of legislation.

"You cannot justly attribute to us what could only be the result of a false interpretation of our principles. Alas! now that I stand on the brink of the grave; now that I am about to quit this immense family, whose happiness I have ardently desired, what do I see around me? Religious troubles, civil dissensions, contumacy on the one hand, tyranny and audacity on the other; a government the slave of popular tyranny; the sanctuary of the laws surrounded by unruly men, who alternately dictate or defile those laws; soldiers without discipline; leaders without authority; ministers without means; a king, the last friend of his people, plunged into bitterness, insulted, menaced, stripped of all authority; and the public power no longer existing but in clubs, in which ignorant and rude men dare to decide all political questions."

He then proceeds to prove, which he does very completely, that it was not the business of the assembly to abolish every ancient institution; that the genius of the French people is such, that they never can be happy or prosperous but under a well-regulated monarchical government; and that, if they wished not the nation to fall under the worst kind of despotism—the despotism of a low faction, they must increase the power of the king. "Alas! (continues he) what are my sufferings, when in the heart of the capital, in the centre of knowledge, I see this misguided people welcome, with a ferocious joy, the most criminal propositions, smile at the recital of murder, and celebrate their crimes as conquests!"

He had then seen comparatively but little; but he lived to see more—to see his countrymen celebrate, as virtues, crimes, compared with which the atrocities of 1792 appear almost as harmless. Being stripped of all his property, which was large, by the robbers of the revolution, he died in poverty in March 1796, and in the 84th year of his age.

Besides the works which we have already mentioned, he wrote "A History of the Parliament of England," and a "History of the Stadholderate;" but these are both of them more remarkable for a specious style and loftiness of invention than for useful observation or solid argument. He wrote likewise "The History of the Divorce of Catharine of Arragon by Henry the Eighth," which is not so much a recital of, and commentary upon, the fact from which he takes the title, as it is an able picture of universal Europe at that period, of the views, interests, and power, of all the different potentates. At the time of his death he was preparing a new edition of all his works, in which were to be made many alterations; and he is said to have left among his manuscripts a "History of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes," in four volumes; but it is also very certain, that, during the sanguinary reign of Robespierre, he burnt a great part of his papers.