But it was also an effective attack on the Church and the sacerdotal system.

The author's method was the same which his greater contemporary Gibbon employed on a larger scale.

A history of facts was a more formidable indictment than any declamatory attack.
Raynal brought home to the conscience of Europeans the miseries which had befallen the natives of the New World through the Christian conquerors and their priests.

He was not indeed an enthusiastic preacher of Progress.

He is unable to decide between the comparative advantages of the savage state of nature and the most highly cultivated society.
But he observes that "the human race is what we wish to make it," that the felicity of man depends entirely on the improvement of legislation; and in the survey of the history of Europe to which the last Book of his work is devoted, his view is generally optimistic.