JOHN, the name of a most unfortunate Protestant merchant at Toulouse, inhumanly butchered under forms of law which were prostituted to shelter the sanguinary dictates of ignorant and fanatical zeal. He had lived forty years at Toulouse. His wife was an Englishwoman of French extraction, and they had five sons, one of whom, Louis, had turned Catholic through the persuasions of a Catholic maid who had lived thirty years in the family. In October 1761 the family consisted of Calas, his wife, Mark Antony their son, Peter their second son, and this maid. Antony was educated for the bar; but being of a melancholy turn of mind, was continually dwelling on passages from authors on the subject of suicide, and one night in that month hanged himself on a bar laid across two folding doors in the shop. The crowd collected by the confusion of the family on so shocking a discovery took it into their heads that he had been strangled by the family to prevent his changing his religion, and that this was a common practice among Protestants. The officers of justice adopted the popular tale, and were supplied by the mob with what they accepted as conclusive evidence of the fact. The fraternity of White Penitents got the body, buried it with great ceremony, and performed a solemn service for him as a martyr; the Franciscans did the same; and after these formalities no one doubted the guilt of the devoted heretical family. Being all condemned to the torture in order to bring them to confession, they appealed to the parliament; but this body, being as weak and as wicked as the subordinate magistrates, sentenced the father to the torture, ordinary and extraordinary, to be broken alive upon the wheel, and then to be burnt to ashes; a diabolical decree, which, to the shame of humanity, was actually carried into execution. Peter Calas, the other son, was banished for life; and the rest were acquitted. The distracted widow, however, found some friends, and among these Voltaire, who laid her case before the council of state at Versailles; and the parliament of Toulouse was ordered to transmit the proceedings. These the king and council unanimously agreed to annul; the chief magistrate of Toulouse was degraded and fined; old Calas was declared to have been innocent; and every imputation of guilt was removed from the family, who also received from the king and clergy considerable gratuities.