In the first place, all the earlier associations of the kind, even the military orders themselves, have their origin in a desire to withdraw so far as possible from contact with the world and its concerns, to seek spiritual perfection in a retired life of contemplation and prayer, to concentrate efforts for this end chiefly within the cloister where each such group is collected, and to act only indirectly, and as it were with the mere surplus overflow of religious energy, on their more immediate neighbours around, and even then chiefly with the idea of persuading all the most devout and fervent amongst them to forsake the world in a similar fishion. Contrariwise, the Jesuit system is to withdraw religious men from precisely this sort of retirement, except as a mere temporary preparation for later activity, and to make habitual intercourse with society a prime duty, rigidly suppressing all such external regulations of dress, rule, and austerities as tend to put obstacles in the way, so leaving the members of the “Company” free to act as emissaries, agents, or missionaries in the most various places and circumstances. Next, the constitution of the elder societies was for the most part democratic. Allowing for special exceptions, the normal scheme of government was this. Each house of an order had a separate life and partial independence of its own. It elected its own superior and officers, usually by ballot, for a short term of years, it discussed its business, and its members confessed their faults, in open chapter. Each group of houses elected a provincial; the provincials, or delegates from among them, elected the general, whose authority was strictly constitutional, and limited as definitely by the rule and statutes as the rights of the youngest novice. Further, admission was seldom difficult; the noviciate rarely exceeded two years, and the novice, professed at the close of that probation, at once entered on a share in the government of the society, and became eligible for its highest offices. Unlike this method in every respect, the Jesuit polity is almost a pure despotism, guarded, no doubt, with certain checks, but even those of an oligarchical kind. The general is indeed elected by the congregation of the society; but, once appointed, it is for life, and with powers lodged in his hands, partly due to the original constitutions, and partly to special faculties and privileges conferred by various popes, which enormously exceed, as regards enactment and repeal of laws, as to restraint and dispensation, and both in kind and degree, those wielded by the heads of any other communities, ∏e alone nominates to every office in the society (with certain significant exceptions to be named presently) and appoints the superiors of all the houses and colleges. The vow of obedience is taken directly to him, and not, as in the older orders, to the rule, as distinguished from the mere chief of the executive. The admission or dismissal of every member depends on his absolute fiat; and, by a simple provision for reports to him, he holds in his hands the threads of the entire business of the society in its most minute and distant ramifications.

Once more, the distinguishing peculiarity of the earlier communities, dating from the origin of the Benedictine rule, is their hostility to local change. The vow of stability, soon added to the three customary pledges of poverty, chastity, and obedience, was designed to impede, not merely itinerancy without settled abode, such as had brought discredit on those ancient monks who were styled circumceUions, nor even easy transition from one religious community to another, unless in search of greater austerity, but even facility of transfer from one house to another of the very same order. Where the profession was made, there, in the absence of exceptional reasons, the life should be spent; and this rule of course tended to nationalism in the monasteries of every country, even in the great military orders, which, though accepting recruits from all quarters, yet grouped them into tongues. But mobility and cosmopolitanism are of the very essence of the Jesuit programme. The founder of the society has excluded the possibility of doubt on this subject, for having chosen the military term “Company,” rather than “Order” or “Congregation ’* to describe his new institute, he explained its meaning to Paul III. as being that, whereas the ancient monastic communities were, so to speak, the infantry of the church, whose duty was to stand firmly in one place on the battlefield, the Jesuits, contrariwise, were tobe the “light horse,” capable of going anywhere at a moment’s notice, but especially apt and designed for scouting or skirmishing. And, to carry out this view, it was one of his plans to send foreigners as superiors or officers to the Jesuit houses of each country, requiring of these envoys, however, to use invariably the language of' their new place of residence, and to study it both in speaking and writing till entire mastery of it had been acquired,—thus by degrees making all the parts of his vast system mutually interchangeable, and so largely increasing the number of persons eligible to fill any given post, without reference to locality.

Further, the object of the older monastic societies was the sanctification of their individual members. In truth, community life was only a later development of the original system, as exhibited in the Thebaid, in accordance with which solitary hermits began to draw near to each other, until the collection of separate huts gradually assumed the form of a laura or hamlet of cells, grouped under an abbot, and with a common place of worship—a model still surviving in the Camaldolese order. Their obedience to a superior, and the observance of some kind of fixed" rule, had no further intention than the improvement of the spiritual character of each person who entered such a community; and, with certain qualifications, this has continued the ideal of the older orders,—modified chiefly by the natural desire of each such body to gain influence and credit from the personal character of all its members and the efficiency of its active operations. But the founder of Jesuitism started at once with a totally diffèrent purpose. To him, from the first, the society was everything, and the individual nothing, except so far as he might prove a useful instrument for carrying out the society’s objects. In a MS. collection of sayings by Loyola, whose genuineness is accepted by the Bollandists, themselves Jesuits, and by his biographer F. Genelli, he is stated to have said to his secretary, Polanco, that “in those who offered themselves he looked less to purely natural goodness than to firmness of character and ability for business, for he was of opinion that those who were not fit for public business were not adapted for filling offices in the society.” He went even further than this, and laid down that even exceptional qualities and endowments in a candidate were valuable in his eyes only on the condition of their being brought into play or held in abeyance strictly at the command of a superior. On this principle, he raised obedience to a position it had never held before, even amongst monastic virtues. His letter on this subject, addressed to the Jesuits of Coimbra in 1553, is still one of the standard formularies of the society, ranking with those two other products of his pen, the Spiritual Exercises and the Constitutions; and it is evident that his views differ very seriously from the older theories on the subject, as formulated in other rules. In them the superior is head of a local family, endued with patemal authority, no doubt as understood by the old civil code of the Roman empire, centuries after the very memory of freedom had been lost, yet having fixed limits, alike traditional and prescribed, besides being exercised only within a limited area and for certain specified purposes. Loyola, true to his military training and instincts, clothes the general with the powers of a commander-in-chief of an army in time of war, giving him the absolute disposal of all members of the society in every place and for every purpose. Not only so, but he pushes the claim much further, requiring, besides entire outward submission to command, also the complete identification of the inferior’s will with that of the superior. He lays down that this superior is tobe obeyed simply as such, and as standing in the place of God, without reference to his personal wisdom, piety, or discretion; that any obedience which falls short of making the superior’s will one’s own in inward affection as well as in palpable effect, is lax and imperfect; that going beyond the letter of command, even in things abstractly good and praiseworthy, is disobedience; and that the “sacrifice of the intellect”—a familiar Jesuit watchword—is the third and highest grade of obedience, well-pleasing to God, when the inferior not only wills what the superior wills, but thinks what he thinks, submitting his judgment so far as it is possible for the will to influence and lead the judgment. So far-reaching and dangerous are these maxims that the Letter on Obedience was formally condemned, not long after Loyola’s death, by the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal, and it tasked all the skill and learning of Bellarmine as its apologist, together with the whole influence of the company, to avert the ratification of the sentence at Rome.

It has, however, been alleged in defence that this very strong language must be glossed and limited by two other maxims penned by Loyola: (1) “Preserve your freedom of mind, and do not relinquish it by the authority of any person, or in any circumstances whatever”; and (2) “In all things except sin I ought to do the will of my superior, and not my own.” But the value of these checks is seriously diminished when it is added that the former of them occurs in the introductory part of the Spiritual Exercises, a manual expressly designed and used for the purpose of breaking down the will of those who pass through its appointed ordeal under a director; while the latter is qualified in its turn, not only by'the whole principle of probabilism, the special doctrine of the society, which can attenuate and even defend any kind of sin, but by the four following maxims, in close juxtaposition to itself in the very same document: “I ought to desire to be ruled by a superior who endeavours to subjugate my judgment or subdue my understanding”; “When it seems to me that I am commanded by my superior to do a thing against which my conscience revolts as sinful, and my superior judges otherwise, it is my duty to yield my doubts to him, unless I am otherwise constrained by evident reasons”; “If submission do not appease my conscience, I must impart my doubts to two or three persons of discretion, and abide by their decision”; “I ought not to be my own, but His who created me, and his too by whose means God governs me, yielding myself to be moulded in his hands like, so much wax I ought to be like a corpse, which has neither will nor understanding, or like a small crucifix, which is turned about at the will of him that holds it, or like a staff in the hands of an old man, who uses it as may best assist or please him.” And one master-stroke of Loyola’s policy was to insure the permanence of this submission by barring access to all independent positions on the part of members of the society, through means of a special constitution that no Jesuit can accept a cardinal’s hat, a bishopric other than missionary, an abbacy, or any similar dignity, save with permission of the general, not to be accorded unless and until the pope has commanded its acceptance under pain of sin.

The next matter for consideration is the machinery by which the society is constituted and governed, so as to enable this principle to become a living energy, and not a mere abstract theory. The society, then, is distributed into six grades :—novices, scholastics, temporal coadjutors, spiritual coadjutors, professed of the three vows, and professed of the four vows. The novice cannot become a postulant for admission to the society till fourteen years old, unless by special dispensation, and is at once classified according as his destination is the priesthood or lay brotherhood, while a third class of “indifferente” receives such as are reserved for further inquiry before a decision of this kind is made. They first undergo a strict retreat of a month in what is practically solitary confinement, during which they go through the Spiritual Exercises, and make a general confession of their whole previous life; after which the first noviciate, of two years’ duration, begins. This is spent partly in daily study, partly in hospital work, and partly in teaching the rudiments of religious doctrine to children and the poor. They may leave or be dismissed at' any time during this noviciate, but if approved are advanced into the grade of scholastics, corresponding in some degree to that of undergraduates at a university. The ordinary course for these is five years in arts, when, without discontinuing their own studies, they must pass five or six years more.in teaching junior classes, not reaching the study of theology till the age of twenty-eight or thirty, when, after another year of noviciate, a further course of from four to six years is imposed, and not till this has been completed can the scholastic be ordained as a priest of the society, and enter on the grade of spiritual coadjutor, assuming that he is not confined to that of temporal coadjutor, who discharges only such functions as are open to lay-brothers, and who must be ten years in the society before being admitted to the vows. The time can be shortened at the general’s pleasure, but such is the normal arrangement. Even this rank confers no share in the government, nor eligibility for the offices of the society. That is reserved for the professed, themselves subdivided into those of the three vows and of the four vows. It is these last alone, forming only a small percentage of the entire body, who constitute the real core of the society, whence its officers are all taken, and their fourth vow is one of special allegiance to the pope, promising to go in obedience to him for missionary purposes whensoever and whithersoever he may order,—a pledge seriously qualified in practice, however, by the power given to the general of alone sending out or recalling any missionary. The constitutions enjoin, by a rule seldom dispensed with, that this final grade cannot be attained till the candidate has reached his forty-fifth year, which involves a probation of no fewer than thirty-one years for even such as have entered on the noviciate at the earliest legal age. These various members of the society are distributed in its noviciate houses, its colleges, its professed houses, and its mission residences. The question has long been hotly debated whether, in addition to these six avowed grades, there be not a seventh, answering in some degree to the Tertiaries of the Franciscan and Dominican orders, secretly affiliated to the society, and acting as its unsuspected emissaries in various lay positions. This class is styled in France “Jesuits of the short robe,” and some evidence in support of its actual existence was alleged during the lawsuits against the company under Louis XV. The J esuits themselves deny the existence of any such body, and are able to adduce the negative disproof that no provision for it is to be found in their constitutions. On the other hand, there are clauses therein which make the creation of such a class perfectly feasible if thought expedient. One is the power given to the general to receive candidates secretly, and to conceal their admission, for which there is a remarkable precedent in the case of Francis Borgia, duke of Gandia, afterwards himself general of the society; the other is an even more singular clause, providing for the admission of candidates to the company by persons who are not themselves members of it. The known facts on either side are insufficient for a decisive verdict, and “Not proven” is the only impartial judgment possible. The general, who should by the statutes of the society reside permanently at Rome, holds in his hands the right of appointment, not only to the office of provincial over each of the great districts into which the houses are mapped, but to the offices of each house in particular, no shadow of electoral right or even suggestion being recognized.

The superiors and rectors of all houses and colleges in Europe must report weekly to their provincial on all matters concerning the members of the society and all outsiders with whom they may have had dealings of any sort. Those employed in district missions report at such longer intervals as the provincial may fix. The provincial, for his part, must report monthly to the general, giving him a summary of all details which have reached himself. But, as a check on him, all superiors of houses in his province are to make separate reports directly to the general once in three months, and further to communicate with him without delay every time any matter of importance occurs, irrespective of any information which the provincial may have forwarded. Nor is this all; an elaborate system of espionage and delation forms part of the recognized order of every house, and, in direct contrast to the ancient indictment and confession of faults in open conventual chapter, every inmate of a house is liable to secret accusation to its superior, while the superior himself may be similarly delated to the provincial or the general.

Nor is the general himself exempt from control on the part of the society, lest by any possibility he might prove, from disaffection or error, unfaithful to its interests. A consultative council is imposed on him by the general congregation, consisting of six persons, whom he may neither select nor remove,—namely, four assistants, each representing a nation, an admonisher or adviser (resembling the adlatus of a military commander) to warn him of any faults or mistakes, and his confessor. One of these must be in constant attendance on him; and, while he is not at liberty to abdicate his office, nor to accept any dignity or office outside it without the assent of the society, he may ybt be suspended or deposed by its authority. No such instance, however, has yet occurred in Jesuit history, although steps in this direction were once taken in the case of a general who had set himself against the current feeling of the society. With so widely ramifying and complex a system in full working order, controlled by the hand of one man, the Company of Jesus has been aptly defined as “a naked sword, whose hilt is at Rome, and whose point is everywhere.”

There would seem at first to be an effectual external check provided, however, in the fact that, while all the officers of the society, except the council aforesaid, hold of the general, he in turn holds of the pope, and is his liegeman directly, as well as in virtue of the fourth vow, which he has taken in common with the other professed. But such is the extraordinary skill with which the relations of the society to the papacy were originally drafted by Loyola, and...

The simple and primary object of the society, says a writer in the Edinburgh Encyclopædia, was to establish a spiritual dominion over the minds of men, of which the pope should appear as the ostensible head, while the real power should reside with themselves. To accomplish this object, the whole constitution and policy of the order were singularly adapted, and exhibited various peculiarities which distinguished it from all other monastic orders. The immediate design of every other religious society was to separate its members from the world; that of the Jesuits, to render them masters of the world. The inmate of the convent devoted himself to work out his own salvation by extraordinary acts of devotion and self-denial; the follower of Loyola considered himself as plunging into all the bustle of secular affairs, to maintain the interests of the Romish church. The monk was a retired devotee of heaven; the Jesuit a chosen soldier of the pope. That the members of the new order might have full leisure for this active service, they were exempted from the usual functions of other monks. They were not required to spend their time in the long ceremonial offices and numberless mummeries of the Romish worship. They attended no processions, and practised no austerities. They neither chanted nor prayed. “They cannot sing,” said their enemies; “for birds of prey never do.” They were sent forth to watch every transaction of the world which might appear to affect the interests of religion, and were especially enjoined to study the dispositions and cultivate the friendship of persons in the higher ranks. Nothing could be imagined more open and liberal than the external aspect of the institution, yet nothing could be more strict and secret than its internal organization. Loyola, influenced, perhaps, by the notions of implicit obedience which he had derived from his military profession, resolved that the government of the Jesuits should be absolutely monarchical. A general, chosen for life by deputies from the several provinces, possessed supreme and independent power, extending to every person, and applying to every case. Every member of the order, the instant that he entered its pale, surrendered all freedom of thought and action; and every personal feeling was superseded by the interests of that body to which he had attached himself. He went wherever he was ordered; he performed whatever he was commanded; he suffered whatever he was enjoined; he became a mere passive instrument incapable of resistance. The gradation of ranks was only a gradation in slavery; and so perfect a despotism over a large body of men, dispersed over the face of the earth, was never before realized. The maxims of policy adopted by this celebrated society were, like its constitution, remarkable for their union of laxity and rigour. Nothing could divert them from their original object; and no means were ever scrupled which promised to aid its accomplishment. They were in no degree shackled by prejudice, superstition, or real religion. Expediency, in its most simple and licentious form, was the basis of their morals, and their principles and practices were uniformly accommodated to the circumstances in which they were placed; and even their bigotry, obdurate as it was, never appears to have interfered with their interests. The paramount and characteristic principle of the order, from which none of its members ever swerved, was simply this, that its interests were to be promoted by all possible means, at all possible expense. In order to acquire more easily an ascendancy over persons of rank and power, they propagated a system of the most relaxed morality, which accommodated itself to the passions of men, justified their vices, tolerated their imperfections, and authorized almost every action which the most audacious or crafty politician would wish to perpetrate. To persons of stricter principles they studied to recommend themselves by the purity of their lives, and sometimes by the austerity of their doctrines. While sufficiently compliant in the treatment of immoral practices, they were generally rigidly severe in exacting a strict orthodoxy in opinions. “They are a sort of people,” said the Abbé Boileau, “who lengthen the creed and shorten the decalogue.” They adopted the same spirit of accommodation in their missionary undertakings; and their Christianity, chamelionlike, readily assumed the colour of every religion where it happened to be introduced. They freely permitted their converts to retain a full proportion of the old superstitions, and suppressed, without hesitation, any point in the new faith which was likely to bear hard on their prejudices or propensities. They proceeded to still greater lengths; and, beside suppressing the truths of revelation, devised the most absurd falsehoods, to be used for attracting disciples, or even to be taught as parts of Christianity. One of them in India produced a pedigree to prove his own descent from Brama; and another in America assured a native chief that Christ had been a valiant and victorious warrior, who, in the space of three years, had scalped an incredible number of men, women, and children. It was, in fact, their own authority, not the authority of true religion, which they wished to establish; and Christianity was generally as little known, when they quitted the foreign scenes of their labours as when they entered them. These detestable objects and principles, however, were long an impenetrable secret: and the professed intention of the new order was to promote, with unequalled and unfettered zeal, the salvation of mankind. Its progress, nevertheless, was at first remarkably slow. Charles V., who is supposed, with his usual sagacity, to have discerned its dangerous tendency, rather checked than encouraged its advancement; and the universities of France resisted its introduction into that kingdom. Thus, roused by obstacles, and obliged to find resources within themselves, the Jesuits brought all their talents and devices into action. They applied themselves to every useful function and curious art; and neither neglected nor despised any mode, however humble, of gaining employment or reputation. The satirist’s description of the Greeks in Rome has been aptly chosen to describe their indefatigable and universal industry:-- _Grammaticus, rhetor, geometres, pictor, aliptes, Augur, schœnobates, medicus, magus; omnia novit Græculus._ Juvenal, lib. iii, 76. “A Protean tribe, one knows not what to call, Which shifts to every form, and shines in all: Grammarian, painter, augur, rhetorician, Rope-dancer, conjuror, fiddler, and physician,-- All trades his own, your hungry Greekling counts.” GIFFORD. They laboured with the greatest assiduity to qualify themselves as the instructers of youth; and succeeded, at length, in supplanting their opponents in every Catholic kingdom. They aimed, in the next place, to become the spiritual directors of the higher ranks; and soon established themselves in most of the courts which were attached to the papal faith, not only as the confessors, but frequently also as the guides and ministers, of superstitious princes. The governors of the society pursuing one uniform system with unwearied perseverance, became entirely successful; and, in the space of half a century, had in a wonderful degree extended the reputation, the number, and influence of the order. When Loyola, in 1540, petitioned the pope to authorize the institution of the Jesuits, he had only ten disciples; but in 1608 the number amounted to 10,581. Before the expiration of the sixteenth century they had obtained the chief direction of the education of youth in every Catholic country in Europe, and had become the confessors of almost all its noblest monarchs. In spite of their vow of poverty, their wealth increased with their power; and they soon rivalled, in the extent and value of their possessions, the most opulent monastic fraternities. About the beginning of the seventeenth century, they obtained from the court of Madrid the grant of the large and fertile province of Paraguay, which stretches across the southern continent of America, from the mountains of Potosi to the banks of the river La Plata; and, after every deduction which can reasonably be made from their own accounts of their establishment, enough will remain to excite the astonishment and applause of mankind. They found the inhabitants in the first stage of society, ignorant of the arts of life, and unacquainted with the first principles of subordination. They applied themselves to instruct and civilize these savage tribes. They commenced their labours by collecting about fifty families of wandering Indians, whom they converted and settled in a small township. They taught them to build houses, to cultivate the ground, and to rear tame animals; trained them to arts and manufactures, and brought them to relish the blessings of security and order. By a wise and humane policy, they gradually attracted new subjects and converts; till at last they formed a powerful and well organized state of three hundred thousand families. Though the power of the Jesuits had become so extensive, and though their interests generally prospered during a period of more than two centuries, their progress was by no means uninterrupted; and, by their own misconduct, they soon excited the most formidable counteractions. Scarcely had they effected their establishment in France, in defiance of the parliaments and universities, when their existence was endangered by the fanaticism of their own members. John Chastel, one of their pupils, made an attempt upon the life of Henry IV.; and Father Guiscard, another of the order, was convicted of composing writings favourable to regicide. The parliaments seized the moment of their disgrace, and procured their banishment from every part of the kingdom, except the provinces of Bourdeaux and Toulouse. From these rallying points, they speedily extended their intrigues in every quarter, and in a few years obtained their re-establishment. Even Henry, either dreading their power, or pleased with the exculpation of his licentious habits, which he found in their flexible system of morality, became their patron, and selected one of their number as his confessor. They were favoured by Louis XIII. and his minister Richelieu, on account of their literary exertions; but it was in the succeeding reign of Louis XIV. that they reached the summit of their prosperity. The Fathers La Chaise and Le Teltier were successively confessors to the king; and did not fail to employ their influence for the interest of their order: but the latter carried on his projects with so blind and fiery a zeal, that one of the Jesuits is reported to have said of him, “He drives at such a rate, that he will overturn us all.” The Jansenists were peculiarly the objects of his machinations, and he rested not till he had accomplished the destruction of their celebrated college and convent at Port Royal. Before the fall, however, of this honoured seminary, a shaft from its bow had reached the heart of its proud oppressor. The “Provincial Letters of Pascal” had been published, in which the quibbling morality and unintelligible metaphysics of the Jesuits were exposed in a strain of inimitable humour, and a style of unrivalled elegance. The impression which they produced was wide and deep, and gradually sapped the foundation of public opinion, on which the power of the order had hitherto rested. Under the regency of the duke of Orleans, the Jesuits, and all theological personages and principles were disregarded with atheistical superciliousness; but under Louis XV. they partly recovered their influence at court, which, even under Cardinal Fleury, they retained in a considerable degree. But they soon revived the odium of the public by their intolerant treatment of the Jansenists, and probably accelerated their ruin by refusing, from political rather than religious scruples, to undertake the spiritual guidance of Madame de la Pampadour, as well as by imprudently attacking the authors of the “_Encyclopêdie_.” Voltaire directed against them all the powers of his ridicule, and finished the piece which Pascal had sketched. Their power was brought to a very low ebb, when the war of 1756 broke out, which occasioned the famous law-suit that led to their final overthrow. In the mean time the king of Portugal was assassinated; and Carvalho, the minister, who detested the Jesuits, found means to load them with the odium of the crime. Malagrida, and a few more of these fathers, were charged with advising and absolving the assassins; and, having been found guilty, were condemned to the stake. The rest were banished with every brand of infamy, and were treated with the most iniquitous cruelty. They were persecuted without discrimination, robbed of their property without pity, and embarked for Italy without previous preparation; so that, no provision having been made for their reception, they were literally left to perish with hunger in their vessels. These incidents prepared the way for a similar catastrophe in France. In March, 1762, the French court received intelligence of the capture of Martinico by the British; and, dreading a storm of public indignation, resolved to divert the exasperated feelings of the nation, by yielding the Jesuits to their impending fate. On the sixth of August, 1762, their institute was condemned by the parliament, as contrary to the laws of the state, to the obedience due to the sovereign, and to the welfare of the kingdom. The order was dissolved, and their effects alienated. But in certain quarters, where the provincial parliaments had not decided against them, Jesuits still subsisted; and a royal edict was afterward promulgated, which formally abolished the society in France, but permitted its members to reside within the kingdom under certain restrictions. In Spain, where they conceived their establishment to be perfectly secure, they experienced an overthrow equally complete, and much more unexpected. The necessary measures were concerted under the direction of De Choiseul, by the Marquis D'Ossun, the French ambassador at Madrid, with Charles III., king of Spain, and his prime minister, the Count D'Aranda. The execution of their purposes was as sudden as their plans had been secret. At midnight, March 31st, 1767, large bodies of military surrounded the six colleges of the Jesuits in Madrid, forced the gates, secured the bells, collected the fathers in the refectory, and read to them the king’s order for their instant transportation. They were immediately put into carriages previously placed at proper stations; and were on their way to Carthagena before the inhabitants of the city had any intelligence of the transaction. Three days afterward, the same measures were adopted with regard to every other college of the order in the kingdom; and, ships having been provided at the different sea ports, they were all embarked for the ecclesiastical states in Italy. All their property was confiscated, and a small pension assigned to each individual as long as he should reside in a place appointed, and satisfy the Spanish court as to his peaceable demeanour. All correspondence with the Jesuits was prohibited, and the strictest silence on the subject of their expulsion was enjoined under penalties of high treason. A similar seizure and deportation took place in the Indies, and an immense property was acquired by the government. Many crimes and plots were laid to the charge of the order; but whatever may have been their demerit, the punishment was too summary to admit of justification; and many innocent individuals were subjected to sufferings beyond the deserts even of the guilty. Pope Clement III. prohibited their landing in his dominions; and, after enduring extreme miseries in crowded transports, the survivors, to the number of two thousand three hundred, were put ashore on Corsica. The example of the king of Spain was immediately followed by Ferdinand VI. of Naples, and soon after by the prince of Parma. They had been expelled from England in 1604; from Venice in 1606; and from Portugal in 1759, upon the charge of having instigated the families of Tavora and D'Aveiro to assassinate King Joseph I. Frederick the Great, of Prussia, was the only monarch who showed a disposition to afford them protection; but in 1773 the order was entirely suppressed by Pope Clement XIV., who is supposed to have fallen a victim to their vengeance. In 1801 the society was restored in Russia by the Emperor Paul; and in 1804, by King Ferdinand, in Sardinia. In August, 1814, a bull was issued by Pope Pius VII., restoring the order to all their former privileges, and calling upon all Catholic princes to afford them protection and encouragement. This act of their revival is expressed in all the solemnity of papal authority; and even affirmed to be above the recall or revision of any judge, with whatever power he may be clothed; but to every enlightened mind it cannot fail to appear as a measure altogether incapable of justification, from any thing either in the history of Jesuitism, or in the character of the present times.

It would be in vain to deny that many considerable advantages were derived by mankind from the labours of the Jesuits. Their ardour in the study of ancient literature, and their labours in the instruction of youth, greatly contributed to the progress of polite learning. They have produced a greater number of ingenious authors than all the other religious fraternities taken together; and though there never was known among their order one person who could be said to possess an enlarged philosophical mind, they can boast of many eminent masters in the separate branches of science, many distinguished mathematicians, antiquarians, critics, and even some orators of high reputation. They were in general, also, as individuals, superior in decency, and even purity of manners, to any other class of regular clergy in the church of Rome. But all these benefits by no means counterbalanced the pernicious effects of their influence and intrigues on the best interests of society. The essential principles of the institution, namely, that their order is to be maintained at the expense of the society at large, and that the end sanctifies the means, are utterly incompatible with the welfare of any community of men. Their system of lax and pliant morality, justifying every vice, and authorizing every atrocity, has left deep and lasting ravages on the face of the moral world. Their zeal to extend the jurisdiction of the court of Rome over every civil government, gave currency to tenets respecting the duty of opposing princes who were hostile to the Catholic faith, which shook the basis of all political allegiance, and loosened the obligations of every human law. Their indefatigable industry, and countless artifices in resisting the progress of reformed religion, perpetuated the most pernicious errors of Popery, and postponed the triumph of tolerant and Christian principles. Whence, then, it may well be asked, whence the recent restoration? What long latent proof has been discovered of the excellence, or even the expedience, of such an institution? The sentence of their abolition was passed by the senates, and monarchs, and statesmen, and divines, of all religions, and of almost every civilized country in the world. Almost every land has been stained and torn by their crimes; and almost every land bears on its public records the most solemn protests against their existence.