Part III. Proofs and Conclusion.

The Jesuits have always spoken of themselves in terms of the most unmeasured pride.

When their society had reached the hundredth year of its existence, they composed a book in its honour. The symbols which decorate the frontispiece of this work sufficiently prove that they esteem the humblest member of their order as infinitely above the rest of mankind. They call themselves “The Company of the Perfect.”* The contents of the volume accord with the arrogance of its emblems.

The Jewish high-priest wore on his breast the jewel called the oracle. The order of the Jesuits considers itself, under the New Alliance, as the oracle from whence the pope draws his inspiration.

They proclaim themselves “the masters of the world, the most learned of mortal men, the doctors of the nations, the Apollos, the Alexanders of theology, prophets descended from heaven, who deliver the oracles in the aecumenic councils.”

* Imago primi sseculi Societatis Jesu, lib. iii., Orat i., p. 409.

The epitaph which they composed for Loyola strikingly exhibits their love of grandiloquence, and their overweening pride. It runs thus:—

“Whoever thou art who conceivest in thy mind the image of Pompey the Great, of Caesar, and of Alexander, open thine eyes to the truth, and thou wilt learn from this marble that Ignatius was the greatest of conquerors.”

The epitaph of Saint Francis Xavier is in the same strain.

But how striking the contrast between their conduct and the apotheosis they award themselves! We could say nothing on this subject which has not been proved by numberless publications.

Some of their own generals, even, have made no secret of their dismay at the perverse tendencies of the order. Mucio Vitelleschi, the sixth general, in one of his letters, dated the 15th of November, 1639, cannot refrain from pointing out the loathsome malady that had fastened upon the Company. “There exists,” he says, “amongst the superiors of our society an excessive cupidity which spreads from them through the whole body. From this source comes the indulgence which they manifest for those who bring them riches.”

Saint Francis Borgia, one of the earliest generals of the order, had before this acknowledged that poison was in its veins. I will not here repeat the numerous testimonies which prove that their casuistry justified crime in all its forms. It is impossible to deny that the doctrines, everywhere to be found in their writings, authorize theft, rape, peijury, debauchery, and even murder; that, when they have judged it expedient to get rid of a king, they have not shrank from making the apology of regicide. But what we should be most repugnant to believe, did not their books, approved by the generals of the order, attest it, is the cynical nature of their science on a matter which ought to remain unknown to religious men, vowed to perpetual chastity, and making pretensions to perfect purity.

I shall not enlarge upon this subject, but confine myself to quoting a judgment which conveys the impression made on grave doctors of the church by the perusal of some of the books of the Holy Company. The university of Paris, in 1643, in its Verites Academiques (Academical Truths), thus expresses itself:

“All that the malice of hell can conceive of most horrible; things unknown even to the most depraved of pagans, all the abominations which could call up a blush on the face of effrontery itself, are epitomised in the book of a Jesuit. The different casuists of this society teach secrets of impurity unknown even to the most dissolute.”

What must be the shamelessness in their secret assemblies, if they suffer it to become thus apparent in their printed works? There is the less likelihood of their amendment, inasmuch as whilst others are led astray by passion and temptation, their immorality is a system, founded on an utter contempt of what is right and just.

It is painful and revolting to make these assertions, but the truth must be told. A pope supports it with his authority. In 1692, Clement VIII. presided at a general chapter of the Jesuits; what is the reproach which he casts upon them? His words reveal the spirit, the tactics, and the whole plan of the Jesuits, ancient and modern.*

* Theatre jesuitique, part ii. 4.

“Curiosity,” said this pope, “induces them to intrude everywhere, and principally into the confessionals, that they may learn, from their penitent, all that passes in his home, among the children, the domestics, and the other inmates or frequenters of the house, and even all that is going on in the neighbourhood. If they confess a prince, they contrive to govern his whole family; they seek even to govern his states, by inspiring him with the belief that nothing will go well without their oversight and care.”

The assertion of Clement VIII., made in terms so precise, would be sufficient to command belief; but there are numerous and striking historical facts, which prove that, under pretence of religion, this Company has constantly carried on a plot against nations and their governments.

I will mention one only of all these facts, but it was so notorious in its time, and is one of such weight, that it is as good as a thousand. It is related as follows by President de Thou, an historian of acknowledged probity:—*

* Le President de Thou, in his Hist, liv. 187.

“The Jesuits were accused, before the senate of Venice, of having pried into family secrets, by means of confession; and of having come, by the same means, to know intimately all sorts of particulars relating to individuals, and, consequently, the designs and resources of the state; and of having kept registers of these things, which they forwarded, every six months, to their general, by the hands of their visitors. Proofs of these charges were found in many documents, which their hurried flight prevented them from carrying off.”

This fact is not denied by Sachin himself, one of the most devoted historians of the Company.*

• Sachin, Hist Soc. Jes., lib. v., No. 15.

This is surely enough to make those writers pause who have undertaken the defence of the Jesuits, and have carried it so far as to assert that they do not concern themselves about temporal things, and that the whole world is in a conspiracy to calumniate them. As if the universities, parliaments, and bishops who have accused them of corrupting morals, and leading the people astray, could have leagued themselves together, from age to age, for a purpose so iniquitous. Strange it is, however, we repeat, that, in our times, they have again succeeded in gaining over the bishops, that the more the world shudders at their name, and abhors them, the more warmly the superior clergy espouses their cause, and identifies itself with them. There is now a concert of apologies in their behalf. The new Catholic school is strenuous for them, alleging even that it is the very excess of their virtue which has called down so much hatred upon them, and that this hatred can only proceed from the envious rage of the impious. M. Laurent, bishop of Luxembourg, says in a pastoral letter of 1845:—

“God has sent to the aid of his church militant a well organised army, commanded by a valiant chief; whose name is Ignatius de Loyola. Anathema against all the sovereigns of Europe, ‘who, guided by an infernal instinct, and by the instigation of some self-styled philosophers, constrained the court of Rome to suspend for a time this holy order of Ignatius the Great.”

In France, of late years, the superior clergy has disseminated many books on the subject of free teaching. Its organs are full of fine-sounding orations in favour of the common right. Nothing can be more curious than their expressions on this subject. They are constantly borrowing the language which they used formerly to stigmatize as subversive of the throne and of the altar. It is true that they were then in the insolence of prosperity, and that their position is since changed. Become feeble themselves, they are compelled to have recourse to the arms of the feeble.

But are they hearty and sincere in all that they proclaim so loudly about right and truth? They have put on the new man too hastily for us to suppose that they have entirely put off the old. Thus, the Bishop of Luxembourg would have all instruction superintended by the clergy, and dependent upon it. The Univers, the organ of the French bishops, holds the same views.*

• L’Univers et L’Union Catholique, 24 Octobre, 10 et 11 Novembre, 1843.

“Since the university has been at work it has only produced incapable and corrupt schoolmasters, and irreligious and impious doctors. The Bishop of Perpignan, following the example of M. de Bonald, demands free teaching. ‘My wishes,’ he says, ‘are in favour of free competition in the instruction of youth; but I believe that this precious instruction has indispensable need of superintendence. Laws, and imperative laws, are necessary to protect society against the dangers of had doctrines. This superintendence ought to combine all the elements capable of rendering it complete and enlightened; and consequently the episcopacy must not remain a stranger to it. In fact, religion has a large share in the inculcation of the sciences, of which it is the^ foundation, and the episcopacy alone is a competent judge in this matter, since it alone has been established guardian of the sacred deposit of the faith. Now, has not its bearing on this point been turned aside?”

All the art which the defenders of the clergy employ in their writings, is compressed into these few lines; the writer first proclaims right and justice, and declares himself the champion of free competition; then he asks for imperative laws against the dangers of had doctrines. And who are to judge of these dangers? The bishops. They alone are competent judges of every range of ideas; the sciences are not to advance beyond the limits they shall prescribe. It appears, then, that in their estimation free instruction and common right signify subjection of thought and conscience to episcopal censure and domination.

“Wherefore,” cries the Bishop of Chalons,* “should there be two sorts of instruction in one house? If it is yours which ought to have the precedence, why not tell us so? Wherefore compel us to play a part in your colleges which is altogether beneath our dignity?

• Idem, 24 Octobre, 1843.

“By virtue of the royal ordinance you are to believe that these persons profess the same religion as the pope. It is true that the catechism says the contrary, but the catechism makes a mistake; the bishops say the contrary, but the bishops know nothing of the matter. Oh but— Make no objections: the king having heard the council of state, orders you to be convinced.”

Are we to believe, then, only what the pope decrees, after having heard the council of cardinals? If it be so, the following is to be our creed:—”The doctrines of civil and political equality are seditious; we cannot hold in too much horror liberty of opinion and of the press, and particularly this maxim, that every man ought to enjoy liberty of conscience for such are the very words of Gregory XVI., in his circular of the 15th of August, 1832.

A French bishop has made himself the interpreter of the spirit of the Vatican under the preceding pope. Different religious journals in Italy have applauded his attacks against those innovators who follow up “the mad and impious project of a restoration or regeneration of humanity.” The Bishop of Carcassonne declared, in a mandate which followed close upon the circular of which we have just spoken:—”If it (the Romish church) so requires, let us sacrifice to it our opinions, our knowledge, our intelligence, the splendid dreams of our imaginations, and the most sublime attainments of the human understanding. Far from us be all that bears the stamp of novelty.”

In the primitive ages, the Christian doctors held another language. Tertullian, speaking in the name of tiie church, thus expresses himself:— *

* Tertullian, Apologet., iv.

“Every law which does not admit of examination is suspicious; when it exacts a blind obedience, it is tyrannical.”

The superior clergy has begun to boast of being alone able to realize liberty and right. We have just seen what it understands by free teaching. There is, after all, no secret to discover. The Bishop of Liege declares openly:— “We desire the monopoly of religious and moral instruction, because to us belongs the divine mission of bestowing it.” *

• Letter of M. Doletz.

Is it not grievous and scandalous to find so many artifices amongst those on whom Jesus especially enjoined simplicity and truth? Their minds have unhappily become perverted by the habit they have contracted of anatomizing vices and crimes; a mass of perfidious subtleties has at length stifled the voice of conscience within them. From hence proceeds their willingness to temporize when interest prompts them; from hence their inconceivable versatility, and their tactics ever changing according to times and places, alternately cursing or blessing, the doctrines of liberty one day, and those of absolutism on the morrow. But it is important to remark that whilst their means are perpetually changing, their end is always the same. When power is adverse to them, or does not favour them as they could wish, they do not shrink from the revolutionary character which, under other circumstances, they consider so odious. Thus, whilst they declare it to be the rigorous duty of those who suffer, to submit to their lot without a murmur, they will, from the same pulpit, excite discontent by propounding ideas which they will afterwards reprobate, when they have no longer an interest in sustaining them. I will give one example of this, one example amongst thousands which prove that what I advance is well founded. On the 21st of May, 1845, at Paris, in the aristocratic church of St. Roch, the Abbe le Dreuille thus exclaimed:— “I am the priest of the people. Labourers do not enjoy the rights to which they have a claim; it is time for the rich and the powerful to render them an account. Is it necessary to tell them that the working-man has a torch in his hand which a single spark will suffice to light, and that he will presently carry it flaming into chateaux and palaces with cries of distress and of vengeance? Has not experience taught us, that privileges authorized by the law are liable to fall before the justice of the people? ”

The same abbe, whom we believe to be sincerely liberal and a friend to the people, once again preached the same doctrine in the same church. He had been authorized to do so. And since there has never been any repetition of the same thing, is it not reasonable to suppose that the desired effect had been produced?

We know no writer more intimately acquainted with the occult plans of the Company than M. de Maistre. As Sardinian ambassador at the court of the Czar, he had no more cherished friends than the Jesuits, to whom Alexander had given refuge, when they were driven out of all other states. Their modern panegyrist, M. Cretineau-Joly, by no means denies that there was a close and intimate connection between M. de Maistre and the Jesuits. “He supported them,” says he, “as one of the key-stones of the social arch.” *

* Histoire religieuse, politique, et littSraire de la. Compagnie de Jesus, t vi.

Alexander, who was addicted to mysticism, and strongly attached to the Holy Scriptures, warmly encouraged the Bible societies. “The emperor,” says the writer whom we have just quoted, “had suffered himself to be deceived. Prince Galitzin, the minister of worship, the highest functionaries of the state, the greater part of the Russian bishops, and even the Catholic archbishop of Mohilev, Stanislas Siestrzencewiez, became avowed patrons of an institution, which was in the long run to strike a mortal blow at the Greek religion and at Catholicism. There rose up in Russia, in favour of the Bible Society, one of those enthusiastic movements which can scarcely be conceived by those who live remote from the scene of action. Anglicanism was securing a footing from the shores of the Black Sea to those of the Frozen Ocean, and was spreading eastwards towards the frontiers of China. Prompted by Galitzin, the Catholic prelates served as blind instruments in its propagation, and encouraged their flocks to favour this work, of the tendencies of which thsy were, themselves, wholly ignorant.”

The Jesuits knew the danger of placing the Scriptures in the hands of the people; for is it not virtually saying to them, Reflect and judge! Such of the innovators as were Catholics were denounced to Pius VII., who severely reprimanded them. Is it not, in fact, an unpardonable audacity, to follow this precept of Jesus: “Search the Scriptures; it is they which testify of me ”? The Scriptures, then, speak, and even testify; this, however, M. de Maistre denies; and, doubtless, his judgment has more weight than that of Christ!

“Let others,” he exclaims, “invoke, as much as you please, the mute word; we live in peace with this false God, (the Bible!) awaiting evermore with fond impatience the moment when its partizans shall be undeceived, and shall throw themselves into our arms, which have been open to receive them during the last three centuries.”* So then the Bible, submitted to the right of private judgment, is but a false God, a mute word; it only becomes intelligible in one single mouth—that of the pope. Moreover, this book is incomplete; the little that is found there is only a germ. “Never was there a shallower notion,” says De Maistre, “than that of seeking in the Bible the whole sum of the Christian dogmas.”

* Essay on the Regenerating Principle in Political Constitutions and other Human Constitutions, pp. 30, 31.

The same writer is shocked at the idea of seeking to verify whether laws or creeds are conformable to equity, or to the doctrines of the apostles.

“What man of sense,” cries he, “would not shudder to put his hand to such a work? ‘We must revert,’ we are told, ‘to the fundamental and primitive laws of the state, which an unjust custom has abolished; and this would be a ruinous game Nothing but would be pound wanting if weighed in this balance. Meanwhile the people are very ready to lend an ear to such exhortations.’ This is well said; nothing can be better. But behold what is man! The author of this observation (Pascal) and his hideous sect (the Jansenists) have never ceased to play this infallibly ruinous game; and in fact the game has perfectly succeeded.”

This is what irritates him; this is what he cannot bear; he sees no hope of safety but in compression; he insists that the altar and the throne should be sacred, and quite above all question. Has he not then, erudite as he is, read how Lactantius, the celebrated apologist, upbraided the Pagan priests? “They make themselves slaves to the creed of their forefathers; they aver that it is to be adopted on trust; they divest themselves of their reason; but those who have enveloped religion in mystery, in order that the people may be ignorant of what they adore, are but knaves and deceivers.

M. de Maistre himself has said: “Never can error be useful, or truth hurtful.” This does not prevent him from maintaining elsewhere, that error is necessary—that it has its advantages—and that truth ought often to be held captive.

“The world,” he says, “always contains an innumerable host of men so perverse, that if they could doubt of certain things, they could also increase immensely the amount of their wickedness.”

Now, we all know that the Bible is styled, from the pulpit, the Book of Truth, and that truth has light for its emblem. But the Jesuits, applauded by M. de Maistre and by Pius VII., have done their utmost to put the light under a bushel. They have raised every possible obstacle to the propagation of the Bible. “They opposed it,” remarks M. Cretineau-Joly, “with a firmness which the prayers and menaces of Galitzin, up to that time their protector and friend, could never overcome. The partizans of the Bible societies became leagued against the Company.”* Now, the Jesuits have taken good care not to oppose version to version. They have uniformly opposed every version, and their intrigues on this subject were one of the causes of their expulsion from Russia, on the 13th of March, 1820. Does not this explain, in some sort, the explosion of rage against the Bible itself, which the reader has remarked in the Secret conference?

Previously to this period, the Jesuits, as their apologist admits, were at open and bitter feud with the Russian universities. On that occasion they found, says the same writer, a bold defender.

“Joseph de Maistre studies it (the Society of Jesus) in its connection both with peoples and kings. Placing before the eyes of the Minister of Public Instruction a picture of the follies and crimes which the revolutionary spirit has produced, he exclaims, with a prophetic voice, which the events of 1812 have justified, not less than those of 1845:
‘This sect (the liberal party), which is at the same time one and many, encompasses Russia, or, more properly speaking, penetrates it in all directions, and attacks it to its deepest roots. It asks no more, at present, than to have the ear of children of all ages, and the patience of sovereigns; it reserves its noisier manifestations for a future time.’ After uttering these words, the truth of which becomes more and more apparent as the circle of revolution enlarges, and monarchs sink deeper into the fatal slumber of indifference, Joseph de Maistre adds: * In the midst of dangers so pressing, nothing can be of greater utility to his Imperial Majesty than a society of men essentially inimical to that from which Russia has everything to dread, especially in the education of youth. I do not even believe that it would be possible to substitute with advantage any other preservative. This society is the watch-dog, which you should beware of sending away. If you do not choose that he should bite the robbers, that is your affair; but let him, at least, roam round the house, and awake you when necessary, before your doors are broken open, or the thieves get in by the windows.”

This language is intelligible; the imagery is striking: the Jesuits are, truly, the vigilant watch-dogs of absolute governments, who rouse them from their sleep when necessary, and are always ready to bite those who would invade their repose. Do they not boast of possessing the statistics of everybody’s thoughts, and of being alone able to predict the periods of the political tides? Thus M. Cretineau quotes these words of John Muller as profoundly judicious:— “Wise men did not hesitate to conclude, that with the Jesuits fell a common and necessary barrier of defence for all powers.”

The rampart of the old order of things being thus overthrown, M. de Maistre gives vent to his wrath in these terms:—

“When we think how a detestable coalition of perverse ministers, magistrates in delirium, and ignoble sectarians, has been able, in our time, to destroy this marvellous institution, and to boast of their work, we are reminded of the fool who triumphantly clapped his foot upon a watch, exclaiming—I will soon find a way to stop your noise / But what am I saying? A fool is not guilty! ”

The Jesuits had a good right to the mortal remains of Joseph de Maistre, so they were delivered up to them, and are deposited in their church at Turin.

M. Saint-Cheron, whom we ask pardon for quoting after a writer so distinguished as M. de Maistre, now comes forward as one of the most ardent disciples of the reverend fathers. He calls to remembrance this remarkable phrase, written by M. de Maistre in 1820:—”Providence is engaged in raising an army in Europe.” -j* This army must needs have been on the increase. M. Saint-Cheron is, no doubt, acquainted with its chiefs; already he perceives “striking signs of the approach of one of those solemn crises which mark,, for ages, the destiny of a people; signs which fore token one of those epochs in which sanguinary contests take place.” Emboldened by these prognostics, he adds:— “Catholicism is taking its measures to assure itself anew of the sword of France.”

Cited by the Journal des Debate of the 21st of February, 1844.— In 1820 an institution of the greatest importance was founded. The 3rd May, 1844, a pompous placard made its appearance in Paris, announcing to the faithful that an august ceremony would take place at St. Sulpice, to return thanks to God for the ever-increasing success of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, inspired by God twenty- three years ago.

It is impossible, however, to be more daring than was De Maistre; he propounds the most formidable views, so that you would say he wrote with a portion of the secret plan before him. He lived in a time when the defeats of freedom were too recent to make him at all cautious in measuring his words. His successors are, in general, more anxious to disguise their odious projects. Often blunt and offensive, but always frank, M. de Maistre was too well acquainted with the falsity of the double system he so vigorously defended, to suppose, for a moment, that it could maintain itself under the rule of liberty. He deems, therefore, that the inquisition and the executioner ought to form its corner-stone.

“There must,” he says, “be some authority against which no one has the right to argue. To reason, said Saint Thomas, is to seek, and to be always seeking is to be never contented.”* No discussion, therefore; the right to use it is only sought by those who would reform and remodel all things—an impious and abominable thought; it is, doubtless, desired to the end that “the crushed party may have time to raise itself up, through the tolerance which is shown towards it, and may crush its adversary in its turn.”

But why should not each party enjoy the same rights, the same liberty? This is precisely the equality which M. de Maistre abhors, he who is characterized as the man eminently religious, the model of a Christian. According to his notion, liberty is a privilege which belongs only to nobles and prelates. What, he indignantly demands, is the source of this flood of detestable doctrines? “It proceeds,” he answers, “from that numerous phalanx of what are called learned men, whom we have not persisted in keeping in their proper place, which is the second.”* This champion of the faith, who has God and religion perpetually on his lips, covers with these sounding words a system of barbarous oppression for all that is most sacred in man: he would have two castes, as masters, holding all the rest in slavery.

“It is not to science that it belongs to guide mankind: it has none of the necessary powers for this purpose. It belongs to prelates, to nobles, to the great officers of the state, to be the depositaries and guardians of the truth; to teach the nations what is evil and what is good, what is true and what false in moral and spiritual things: none others have any right to reason upon matters of this nature. They have the natural sciences to amuse themselves with— of what do they complain? As to the man who speaks or writes so as to take away a national dogma from the people, he ought to he hung as a common thief Why has so great an imprudence been committed as to grant liberty of speech to every one? It is this that has undone us. Philosophers (those at least who assume the name) are all possessed with a sort of fierce and rebellious pride which takes nothing for granted; they detest all distinctions of which they do not partake: all authority revolts them, and there is nothing out of their own sphere which they do not hate.

Leave them alone, and they will attack everything, even God himself, because he is their master. Is it not these very men who have written against kings and against him who has established them! Oh! if, when the earth shall be settled-

M. de Maistre here suddenly checks himself. He has, however, said enough to betray his gigantic hopes that the old system shall be re-established, that free inquiry shall be abolished, that all independence shall be impossible for the people, and that priests and nobles alone shall reign.

He quotes this saying of Cardinal de Retz: “He who assembles the people stirs them up to insurrection.” The commentary which he makes upon it is worthy of himself.

“A maxim,” he says, “the spirit of which is unimpeachable. The laws of fermentation are the same in morals as in physics. It arises from contact, and augments in proportion to the mass of the fermenting matters. Collect a number of men rendered spirituous by any passion whatever: you will shortly have heat, then excitement, and presently delirium will ensue, precisely as in the material process, where the turbulent fermentation leads rapidly to the acid, and this is speedily followed by the putrid. Every assembly is liable to the action of this general law, if the process is not arrested by the cold of authority, which glides into the interstices and stops the movement of the particles.”

Consequently, meetings of the people must be interdicted. But, at least, the people may have the right to represent themselves by deputies? See what one of the boldest defenders of the Jesuits says on this question which is only accepted by reason, and discusses points of faith, is good for nothing but to undermine thrones; therefore does M. de Maistre desire that this error, the fruitful root of many others, should be extinguished by kings themselves.

“Help me,” he says, “with all speed to make it disappear the more quickly. It is impossible that considerations so important should not at length make their way into Protestant council chambers, and be stored up there, to descend after a time like fertilizing water into the valleys. There is every inducement for the Protestants to unite with us. Their science, which is now a horrid corrosive, will lose its deleterious qualities in allying itself with our submission, which will not refuse in its turn to derive light from their science. This great change must, however, begin with the sovereigns.”*

* Du Pape, p. 476.

None are so much interested as the great in the demolition of Protestantism; other classes may be called to aid them; the Protestant clergy alone is to be excepted.

“Several manifest signs,” he says, “exclude this ministry (the Protestant clergy) from the great work. To adhere to error is always a great evil; but to teach it by profession, and to teach it against the cry of conscience, is the extreme of evil, and absolute blindness is its inevitable consequence.”

We have, then, a right to distrust doctrines which are an evident source of wealth and domination for those who teach them; the ardent zeal with which they are inflamed is to be justly suspected.

In 1804, at the very moment when kings were struggling under the grasp of their conqueror, and plotting useless coalitions, Pius VII., so far from surrendering a jot of the ancient Roman supremacy, wrote thus to his nuncio, at Vienna:—

“The principle of the canon law is this:— That the subjects of a heretic prince are liberated from all duty, all fealty and homage towards him.” “Those who are at all versed in history,” he remarks, “cannot but be acquainted with the sentences and depositions pronounced by pontiffs and councils against princes who persisted in heresy.”

“In good truth,” concludes Pius VII., “we are fallen upon times of great calamity, and of such deep humiliation for the spouse of Jesus Christ, that it is not possible for her to practise many of her holy maxims, nor even expedient for her to bring them forward; and she is, at the same time, forced to interrupt the course of her just severity against the enemies of the faith.”

Thus we are warned. Rome (unless Pius IX. accomplish a complete revolution in its traditions) is not less tenacious of its canonical rights than are kings and nobles of their prerogatives. They protest that God is the author of these. Absolution is holy, the theocratic system is sacrosanct. It has never been destroyed, it is only suspended until the passing away of these times, so calamitous and humiliating to the church, for days of glofy are promised to her. Then, every sovereign who shall be heretical, or even of suspected faith, shall either be converted or deprived of his throne; the holy maxims of ancient times shall revive, and a just severity against the enemies of the faith shall renew its course.

It is not without reason that M. de Montalembert, while defending the Jesuits against those who reproach them with their vow of absolute obedience to the popes, is astounded at this accusation, and remarks that the bishops still make oath of absolute submission to the pope, in clauses and terms the most precise, strong, and comprehensive; and yet this important oath has never, till now, been a subject of accusation. Let us attach to each word its proper value, and we shall perceive that everything in this formula combines to render the pope the absolute chief of the world, as well temporal as spiritual, and that we must not therefore be surprised that the bishops spare no efforts to make the ecclesiastical jurisdiction predominate over every civil jurisdiction. Before he receives the mitre each bishop swears thus:—

“I will do all that in me lies to pursue, defend, increase, and strengthen the rights, honours, privileges, and the authority of the holy Roman church of our lord the pope and his successors.

“I will humbly receive the apostolic commands (the orders of the pope), and I will apply myself to their execution with the greatest zeal and the strictest punctuality.

“I promise and swear that I will with all my might persecute and combat all heretics, schismatics, and rebels to our lord the pope.”

As for the priests, every one knows that they are bound to swear implicit obedience to their bishops. It is exactly the same with the different orders and religious congregations. The Jesuits are, therefore, not the only ones bound by vow to labour for the restoration of Home’s sovereign power, and for the subjection of temporal rulers. What distinguishes them from other orders is their perfect accordance with theocratic principles, and the unremitting energy with which they follow them up to all their consequences. They it is who sustain the burden of the strife, and spur on the combatants.

Just now, indeed, the superior clergy, though never ceasing to extol the Jesuits, find themselves compelled to use language somewhat more liberal than formerly. But who will believe that these manifestations are genuine? Has not Father Roothaan himself but lately declared that his order applauded the tendencies and the acts of the new pope? Does he not loudly protest against those who have written that in Piedmont and Sicily, as well as in the Homan States, the Jesuits are striving to turn away princes from encouraging progress? Is he not indignant that they should be styled retrograde, and they should be accused of favouring the system of Metternich?

“Our Company,”he says, “is a religious order, solemnly approved by the church. Its sole object is the glory of God and the salvation of souls; its means are the practice of the evangelical counsels, and the zeal of which the apostles and apostolic men of all ages have set it the example. It knows no other means. It is a stranger to politics; and has never allied itself with any party whatsoever. Calumny may be pleased to spread perfidious insinuations, and to represent the Jesuits as mixed up with political intrigues; but I defy any one to point out to me a single priest, amongst those who are subordinate to me, who has departed on this point from the spirit and the formal prescriptions of our institution.

“Will any one pretend to insinuate that the Jesuits of the Roman States have made an alliance with Austria? Surely this would be attributing a singular importance to these men of religion! But this supposition is so contrary to common sense, reason, and evidence, that it does not even require to be refuted.

“The Company of Jesus, like the church, has neither antipathy nor predilection for the political constitutions of the several states. Its members accept with sincerity the form of government under which Providence has marked their place, whether a friendly power encourages them, or whether it merely respects in them the rights which they enjoy in common with other citizens.

“If the political institutions of the country they inhabit are defective, they quietly endure their defects; if they are in course of improvement, they applaud every amelioration; if those institutions grant new privileges to the people, they claim their just share of this advantage; if they become open to more extended and liberal views, the Jesuits profit by this to give more extension to works of beneficence and zeal. Everywhere they bow before the laws; they respect public authorities; they are endowed with all the feelings of good and loyal citizens; they partake with these their obligations, their burdens, and their rejoicings.

“It is as contrary to truth as to public notoriety that the Jesuits are in a state of permanent conspiracy against the august pontiff whom the whole universe salutes with its acclamations. To love, venerate, bless, and defend Pope Pius IX., to obey him in all things, to applaud the wise reforms and ameliorations which he shall be pleased to introduce, is for every Jesuit a duty of conscience and of justice, which it will ever be grateful to him to fulfill.”

Up to this day, then, history has been nothing else, with regard to the Jesuits, than a perpetual calumny—a diabolical conspiracy. Thus, we are not to accept any historians but such as are sanctioned by them. What has been seen in past times, what is seen at present, is not to he believed; the most authentic witnesses are to be sacrificed to the immaculate purity of this innocent order. At Lucerne, at Freiburg, in the Valais, in all places where they have succeeded in establishing their influence, however heavy may be the chains with which they have laden the people, however intolerable the compression which they have established, we are to call it all the reign of social rights and of true liberty! Well; let us say nothing more of the past, which pronounces against them such terrible condemnations; let ns look at what is close to us—let us see what is their favourite regime; let us see, amongst other laws exhumed from the dust of the middle ages, what decrees the Grand Council of the Valais, acting under their direction, has pronounced against illicit assemblies, blameable reports and speeches, &c. Here follows the first article:—

“A fine of from twenty to two hundred francs, and imprisonment for not less than a month, nor more than two years, or one of these punishments only, shall be inflicted on those who shall utter scandalous words against the holy Catholic and Roman religion, or against public morality; this sentence does not regard blasphemers who shall be punished according to the criminal laws; likewise on those who introduce, placard, expose, lend, distribute, or possess knowingly, or without authorization, writings or infamous books, or caricatures, which attack the holy religion of the state or its ministers …. The said objects, moreover, shall be confiscated. In case of repetition of the offence, the highest amount of the fine and the longest term of imprisonment may be doubled.”

The Semeur makes the following observations on this article:—

“A citizen of the Valais happens to give it as his opinion, that such or such a miracle, proclaimed by the reverend fathers, is apocryphal:—scandalous words against the holy Catholic, apostolic, and Roman religion; fine and imprisonment for an offence so heinous! He ventures to assert that certain curSs do not set the best possible example:—most scandalous words, which must be punished by the maximum of fine and imprisonment! He goes, perhaps, further; he disputes the title of the Virgin Mary to the adoration of the faithful, and maintains that the Roman church is at variance on this point with the New Testament:—this is more than scandal, it is a blasphemy, and blasphemy is a crime in this exceedingly well-governed canton. Our citizen of the Valais, with rash temerity, affirms that the morality of the Jesuits is sometimes very immoral:—blasphemy in the highest degree, and an ignominious punishment must be awarded for so heinous a crime!

“Is it conceivable that a law of this nature should be promulgated in 1845, on the frontiers of France and of Italy, in the very face of a press which takes note of all these atrocities; whilst the Jesuits wish to make it appear that they are prepared to admit a certain liberty? Is it comprehensible that they should offer to all Europe the spectacle of this ignoble thirst for despotism, this base and odious impudence, for which no name is strong enough in any known human tongue? Our country (France) was justly and deeply enraged against the law of sacrilege, which was abolished in obedience to the unanimous voice of the nation, after the days of July. But what was this law of sacrilege compared with the law promulgated in the Valais on the subject of scandalous words against the Catholic religion or its ministers? It was mildness, gentleness, and tolerance itself. It was only called into operation on the occasion of an offence committed in a place of worship during the exercises of religion, or of a direct attack upon a minister of the church. In the Valais it was enough to have uttered scandalous words,—and where? In the street, in an inn, at home, perhaps before strangers! Did the Inquisition go farther? What do I say?—did it go so far?

“We thought that the ordinances of the eleventh century, which prescribed that the tongue of the blasphemer or the heretic should be pierced with a hot iron, no longer lived but in history, as monuments of atrocious barbarism. We were mistaken; the Jesuits will not suffer anything that is cruel or infamous to perish: they may hide it for a time, they close their arsenal when the tempest roars, but let sunshine come forth again and they bring out their chains, their instruments of torture, and their merciless steel.

“Tell us, after this, of the generous principles of the Jesuits and the Romish priests! Boast of your love of liberty! Tell us for the thousandth time that you, and you alone, know how to respect the rights of nations and the progress of humanity! Advocate democracy in your sermons and in your journals! We know you too well, and shortly there will not be one reasonable man to be found who does not discern, under your borrowed mask, your insatiable tyrannic instincts!

“If there were any sincerity in your liberal maxims, you would at least express your indignation against such laws as those which have been promulgated in the Valais; you would attack the abominable enterprises of the Jesuits; but which of your journals is capable of such honourable frankness? The Univers, and the Ami de La Religion, and all the ecclesiastical gazettes, will keep silence, and on the morrow, even, these same papers will not be ashamed to reproach their adversaries with being inimical to liberty!

“Comedians! comedians! the wretched piece that you are playing will soon come to an end! beware of its denouement!”

Just as I had finished these lines there was discovered in the Bibliotheque Royale a manuscript, containing on the subject of the Jesuits some pages which were not intended for publication, and* which possess a curious interest at the distance of two hundred years from the date when they were written. They are by Thomas Campanella, well known by his book on the City of the Sun and other works, but still more celebrated for afflictions which would have subdued any other soul than his. His testimony comes forth opportunely after having remained buried nearly two centuries. Campanella’s pages may be considered the complement of the Secret Plan; we learn from them once more by what occult mechanism some thousands of men dispersed over the face of the globe succeed in exercising an almost incredible power. I pass over pages of the cele«i brated Dominican, which contain only what would seem a tedious repetition of facts and artifices already divulged in books that have obtained great notoriety; and will only remark with Campanella, who adduces historical facts in proof of his assertion, that the Jesuits only exhibit great zeal for the pope’s infallibility when it serves their own plans, but that they make not the least account of it when it speaks in a tone of authority to impose restraints and rules upon them. Let us hear the author.

“Their father-general resides constantly in Rome, all the others yield him absolute submission. He has selected some fathers who are called assistants because they continually aid him. There is at least one of these for each nation, by whose name he is called, one being styled the Assistant of France, another of Spain, a third of Italy, a fourth of England, a fifth of Austria, and so on for all the other provinces and kingdoms. Each of them has for office to acquaint the father-general as to all events of state which take place in the province or kingdom, for which he is assistant; and this he does by means of his correspondents who reside in the provincial towns of the said kingdom. Now these correspondents inform themselves with scrupulous care as to the character, inclinations, and intentions of the sovereigns, and by each courier they acquaint the assistant with whatever facts have recently occurred or been brought to light. These are immediately communicated by the assistant to the father-general, who thereupon assembling his council, they proceed together to perform an anatomy of the world, and scrutinize the interests or the projects of all Christian princes. After having weighed all the documents, they agree among themselves to favour the interests of one prince and thwart those of another, making everything turn to their own advantage. Now as the lookers-on more easily detect the sleights-of-hand committed than those who are playing the game, so these fathers having under their eyes the interests of all princes, can very accurately appreciate the exigencies of times and places, and put in operation the most decisive means in order to favour a prince whom they are sure they can make use of for the realisation of their own interested views.

“The Jesuit fathers confess a great part of the nobility in the Catholic States, and often the sovereigns themselves; whereby they are enabled to penetrate every design and resolution, to know the dispositions of princes and subjects, and to lay them before the father-general or an assistant.

“Anybody of the least penetration may easily convince himself how many perplexities they can cause to those princes whom their own interests, the sole and exclusive motive of their actions, point out to them as adversaries.

44 Secrecy is necessary in state affairs: a state is undone when its secrets are divulged. But the Jesuit fathers, that is to say the father-general and his assistants, whether by means of the confessional or of the mutual consultations held by the correspondents who reside in all the chief towns of Christendom, or through other adherents, of whom we shall speak presently, are exactly and minutely informed of all the decisions come to in the most private councils; and they know the forces, revenues, and expenditure of sovereigns, better in a manner than the sovereigns themselves. All this costs them only so much postage. At Rome alone, as the post-masters attest, their postages for each courier amount to 60 or 70, and often to 100 gold crowns. Being thus profoundly acquainted with the interests of all sovereigns, is it not in their power to weaken the credit of any one of them with the rest, to ruin any sovereign they please in the estimation of his people, to make the latter his enemies, and to instill the leaven of revolt into the state—and all this the more easily, since by means of confessions and consultations they penetrate into the most secret thoughts of the subjects? ”

After this follow details respecting the various classes of Jesuits, laymen and priests, and their auxiliaries in sundry occult functions. 44 They have them,” says Campanelle,

“in every kingdom, province, and court.** Their choice falls on shrewd and adroit men, whom they recompense with pensions, benefices, or high offices.

“The fourth kind,** he says, “is that of the political Jesuits, in whose hands is the government of the whole order. They are of those whom the devil has tempted with that temptation which Christ endured in the wilderness, hcec omnia tibi dabo; and they have not shrunk from the offer. They have made it their task to constitute their company a perfect monarchy; and they establish it in Rome, the centre of confluence for almost all the affairs of Christendom. There resides the chief of these politicians— that is to say, their general—with many others who profess the same maxims. Being informed beforehand, through their spies and numerous correspondents, of all the affairs of the greatest importance which are pending at the court of Rome, and having their minds fixed upon those issues which accord with their own interests, each of them is assiduous in attendance on the cardinals, ambassadors, and prelates, with whom they adroitly ingratiate themselves. They talk to them of the affair in question or about to be brought forward—represent it under such colours as suit themselves—and do this so cleverly, that they make their hearers believe black is white. And forasmuch as first impressions, especially when they are derived from clerical persons, usually leave deep traces on the mind, it follows that extremely important negociations, conducted by ambassadors, princes, and other eminent personages of the Roman court, have often not succeeded as princes would have desired, the Jesuits having forestalled the influence of the princes or their agents by their insidious statements.

“The same artfulness which they use with the Roman prelates, they exhibit also in their dealings with sovereigns, either directly or through the medium of the Jesuits of the second class who are away from Rome. Thus does the greater part of the affairs of Christendom pass through the hands of the Jesuits; and those affairs alone succeed to which they offer no resistance.

“They formerly supplicated His Holiness Gregory XIII. (on the colourable plea of the good of the Church) to enjoin all legates and apostolic nuncios to take, for companions and confidants, Jesuits whose councils should guide them in all their actions.

“By such manoeuvres, and by that knowledge they have of affairs of state, the principal Jesuits have acquired the friendship of several temporal and spiritual princes, whom they have prevailed on to do and say many things for their advantage. Hence have resulted two great evils.

“The first is, that, abusing the friendship and kindness of princes, they have not scrupled to ruin many rich and noble families, by usurping their patrimonies. They have enticed into their order such of the pupils in their schools as were most remarkable for their talents; and very often, when the latter have become useless to them through infirmities or other causes, the Jesuits have turned them off under some pretext or another, but without restoring their property, of which, during the period of profession, the order had taken care to become possessor.

“The second evil is, that these fathers are sedulous to make known the friendship and intimacy they enjoy with princes, and give it out for still greater than it really is, in order to engage the sympathies of all the ministers, and thus excite everybody to have recourse to them for obtaining favours. . They have publicly boasted of their ability to create cardinals, nuncios, lieutenants, governors, and other functionaries. There are some among them who have even made bold to affirm that their general can do much more than the pope; and others have alleged that it is better to belong to their order than to be a cardinal. All these things have been said publicly; and there is scarcely any one who, in conversing familiarly with them, has not heard them give utterance to the like sentiments.

M Amply provided with resources of this kind, they affirm that they can favour or disgrace whomsoever they please; and covering themselves with the cloak of religion, the better to secure belief, they often succeed in their designs.

“It is not long since one of the leading Jesuits, speaking in public to one of the leading sovereigns in the name of his Company, began with these audacious words, founded on the notion that they are a Power:—‘ Our Company has always maintained a good understanding with your Serenity, &c.

“These reverend fathers make it their business to have it believed that all those whom the prince favours in any manner whatever have been their favourites; and, by this means, they acquire more mastery over subjects than their monarch himself. This is highly prejudicial to the latter, both because it is inconsistent with every interest of state that ecclesiastics so ambitious and politic should have so much power over the will of ministers as to be able, if they please, to produce treason or riots; and because, through their influence over the ministers, their adherents, they introduce sworn Jesuits into the prince’s service as councillors or secretaries; these, again, intrigue until they induce the prince to employ some Jesuits as confessors or preachers, and then all together ply their task as spies and informers, rendering a minute account to the general of all that passes in the secret councils. Thence it happens that certain projects get wind immediately, secrets of great importance are discovered, yet no one can tell who is the traitor, and sometimes suspicion falls on those who are not guilty.”

“As from different plants the alembic extracts an unguent capable of curing many sores; as the bees suck honey from many flowers, so the Jesuit fathers draw profit from the infallible knowledge they have of all the interests of princes, and of the facts which occur in all parts, being skilled to the use of speech, so as to obtain their profit through the good or evil fortune of others, but more frequently through the latter than the former. Often, too, they prevail with princes, whose dispositions they have already sounded, by hinting at the possession of great means to enable the latter to accomplish their designs and crown all their desires. But when by the help of princes they have succeeded in their views, judging that if they aided those princes to rise too high, the latter might one day do them a mischief, they begin, as lawyers do with their causes, to protract and delay everything, and, with surprising artifice and cunning, they turn the cards, and finally ruin th? designs they had themselves suggested.

“From all that has been said, it follows that the Jesuits never act with the least honesty towards any princes whatever, lay or ecclesiastic, and that they aid them only as far as their own interests require. It also follows that their aid should never be accepted by princes, and still less by prelates, because they are equally ready to bestow their attachment on everybody, and make themselves Frenchmen with the French, Spaniards with Spaniards, and so forth, according to circumstances; and since, provided they compass their own ends, they care not though it be to the detriment of this one or that, the enterprises in which the Jesuit fathers have meddled have rarely had a good result.

Moreover, knowing the interests of all princes, and being exactly informed of all that is daily transacted in the most secret councils, those who profess themselves partisans of France propose to the king, and his principal ministers, certain conditions of importance, which the political fathers transmit to them from Rome. Now, as they do the same with regard to Spain and other countries, there ensues such a jealous distrust in the hearts of princes that the one no longer puts any faith in the other, which is immensely prejudicial to the public tranquillity and the general welfare of the Christian world, such distrust rendering very difficult the formation of a league against the common enemy, for peace between the princes themselves is insecure.

“Sometimes we see a person afflicted with a dangerous disease; he shrieks out piteously; every one thinks him in great danger, but no one can guess the nature and origin of the disease. Thus every one complains of the Jesuits: one, because he is persecuted by them; another, because they have dealt dishonestly by him; but still the evil goes on, and it is not easy to apprehend its cause. Now, that cause consists in their huge desire to aggrandise themselves evermore. To accomplish this, they will stop at nothing, whether it be to displease everybody, or to deceive princes, or to oppress the poor, or to extort widows’ fortunes, or to ruin the most noble families; and they very often sow the seeds of suspicion among Christian princes, in order to have opportunities of mixing in their most important affairs.

“To demonstrate how excessive is their passion for aggrandisement, I might adduce numberless proofs from experience. In the time of Gregory XIII. had not the Jesuits the audacity to solicit of the pope the investiture of all the parochial churches of Rome, in order to lay the foundations of their monarchy? But what they could not obtain in Rome they have at last recently obtained in England, where they have procured the election of an arch-priest, bound by oath to their Company. This man, far from protecting the clergy, is like a ravening wolf to all the priests who wish to be independent of the Jesuits, and drives them to despair, forbidding them to converse together under severe penalties. Almost all the English clergy have become sworn Jesuits, and none are now received in the colleges but those who pledge their words to become Jesuits; so that should that kingdom return to Catholicism, England would give birth to an effective Jesuit monarchy, since the ecclesiastical revenues, all the abbeys, benefices, and bishoprics, the arch-priestships, and the other dignities, would be conferred on none but Jesuits.

“If now, when they have no temporal jurisdiction, they exhibit to the world such great and scandalous disorders, what would they do if unhappily one of them were elected pope? In the first place, he would fill the sacred college with Jesuits, and by that means the pontificate would remain for ever in the hands of the Company. Moreover, the sacred college being moved only by its interests, and possessing the papal power, might they not endanger the states of several princes, especially those most contiguous to Rome? The Jesuit pontiff would bestow on his order the investiture of some towns or of some temporal jurisdiction, in which it would adroitly maintain itself, to the great injury of other princes. When the sacred college was filled with Jesuits, the latter would be the arbiters of Christ’s whole patrimony; and like the dropsical patient, whose thirst increases as he drinks, the more greatness they acquired the more they would covet, and they would cause a thousand troubles. And as there is nothing so susceptible of changes as states, these fathers would put in operation all their artifices and resources, and would strive to disorganize everything in order to realize universally the form of domination which is dearest to them; and by this means they would become real monarchs.

“Were I ordered to write what I think the best to keep the Jesuits within rule, without doing them the least injury, but on the contrary procuring them the greatest advantage—for I would fain make them real monarchs, not of this world, which is but vile clay, but of souls, which are Christ’s treasure—I should be ready to do so with charity, and with all the strength it should please the Lord to grant me.”

I shall be asked, perhaps, do I think that any one has ventured to suggest elsewhere than in the occult committee the startling project of dispensing priests, monks, or nuns, from real celibacy? If it were so, it would still be very difficult to obtain tangible evidence of the promulgation of such a doctrine. Though I am of opinion that in its most audacious extreme it must have remained unrealized, I still believe that something of the kind has gone abroad; and if I am not mistaken, I have met with some tokens of its existence.

Nothing is more common than the licentiousness of the clergy, at least in Italy, where little pains are taken to conceal it; for the heads of the church are the less disposed to visit it with punishment, since the impunity they extend to it seems a sort of compensation for the total sacrifice of freedom to which the clergy are still doomed.

I knew a lady, a widow with one child, who was frequently visited by a clergyman of staid habits and irreproachable character. No one in the world would have presumed to entertain the least suspicion as to the nature of their intercourse, so extremely respectful was their behaviour towards each other.

One day, just as he had left the house, I paid a visit to the lady—a charming person, whose beauty was of the kind peculiar to that period of life at which youth is past, but decline has not begun. The moment I set eyes on her I was greatly surprised to see patches of white powder scattered over her bosom and shoulders. The venerable clergyman wore hair-powder.

Unwilling to hurt her feelings, but regardful of her interest, I led her to a looking-glass, where she blushed in great confusion. I entreated her to pardon my boldness, assured her of my discretion, and at last put her at her ease. She then confessed to me that she tenderly loved that grave and austere man, whom any one, to look at him, would have supposed insensible to such a passion; but she assured me that under a rough bark he concealed a warm and loving heart.

Of course I did not allow so good an opportunity of putting questions to escape me. I asked her, in the first place, how her reverend friend reconciled his vow of chastity with his conduct.

“It is true,” she said, “the church must have priests who are not married, for otherwise the clergy would lack authority and prestige; and besides, confession is’ perhaps still more necessary than preaching (astonishing remark!); but if celibacy were abolished, there could be no more confession. On the other hand, how can men help loving? A man does not put off human nature when he becomes a priest. Now, there is but one way of reconciling these seeming contrarieties: and that is to love, and even with all the ardour of the senses, but without compromising the clergyman, making, if necessary, the greatest sacrifices— except, she added with a smile, that of not loving—in order not to expose the priesthood to the contempt or derision of the multitude.

“As for our affection, it is no obstacle, we are very sure, to sacred duties: far from being so, it excites us to fulfil them with more devotedness. Perhaps you will be surprised if I tell you that he whom I love regards, as a recompense from God for his zeal, the possession of a mistress who so well understands her position, and conducts herself with such prudence.”

When I remarked to her that I could not understand the vehement indignation with which the individual in question professed to regard such faults, and that this appeared to me an instance of bad faith and hypocrisy, she made answer that he acted in perfect sincerity; for he believed iirmly that the clergy ought to take care never to afford the laity grounds for scandal; what incensed him was not the fact itself (since he knew well that every man, priest or lay, was irresistibly impelled to an attachment for some woman), but the levity and indifference to the interests of the church shown in the neglect of precautions against discovery, which are less difficult to take than is commonly supposed.

Some years afterwards the lady’s lover reaped the reward of his piety, decorum, and prudence, being appointed a bishop. His mistress accompanied him to his diocese, where he had no sooner arrived than he took measures which to many priests seemed intolerable. It was seriously believed that he was an enemy to the sex, and one of those whom nature has created incomplete. One of my friends, who was among the victims of these inexorable reforms, wrote and told me that he was living on bread and water in a convent, as a punishment for a liaison of which he had made no secret, and that he could not tell when his penance would end. He was not aware that I could deliver him forthwith. A sharp note addressed to the lady, in which I strongly reprobated the rigour displayed in the case, produced the desired effect. I saw her some time afterwards. She defended the prelate’s conduct, and thought he was right in not tolerating those thoughtless and awkward persons who exposed the church to such serious disadvantages. You know well, she said, that his lordship is not so unjust as to desire that his priests should surpass human -nature; but he thinks he has a right to insist on prudence and circumspection for the honour of the church. And then, as she had picked up a smattering of Latin, she quoted to me (from St. Paul!) these words, which the bishops are constantly repeating to the clergy: Si non caste, saltern caute—If not chaste, at least be cautious.

Let us now refer to Section XV. of the Secret Sitting, in which mention is made of the hospitals a la Saint Rock. This passage would have remained for me a dead letter, but for a fact which cast a strong light upon it.

When very young, I had been placed as a boarder with an ex-Capuchin, Father Evasio Fantini, who was every moment beset by crowds of penitents of every rank and condition. What I saw and heard early excited in me reflections which were not without influence on the bent of my mind. At a later period I passed some time with the old man during my vacations, and used to accompany him in all his walks, delighting to hear him call up his recollections of the cloisters, of which he was a living echo. He took pleasure in making me acquainted with everything that passed in them to the minutest details, with a frankness and kindly simplicity worthy of his age.. What I learned from him was more useful to me, towards judging of monks and the monastic system, than all the books I have since read.

One evening at Casal Monferrat, as we were returning home from a walk, we observed an extraordinary bustle and excitement, and soon learned that faint cries had been heard issuing from underground in a girl’s boarding-school; masons had been employed to search the spot, and a newborn infant had been found in a disgustingly filthy state in the privy of the house occupied by D. Bossola, a parish priest of the town. D. Bossola and his servant-woman were proved guilty. I will not repeat all the observations uttered among the crowd; it was not safe for priests to be seen there at such a moment, and we hastily came away. The priest was sent to a convent, and his accomplice was incarcerated. And, by-the-bye, there was much talk some time afterwards of the interest shown for her by the clergy; she received visits, was comforted, aided, protected, and treated with the most assiduous kindness.

Just as Father Fantini and I were quitting the spot, we were accosted by a reverend Jesuit father, who had just stepped out of a carriage, and learned the whole story. He was angry, but for reasons we were far from suspecting.

“Never would such things happen,” he said to us, “if the clergy, and especially the bishops, had an ounce of brains” (uri oncia di sale in zacca). “Those who wielded
power, religious or political, were all a pack of asses. It ought to be impossible for such dangerous scandals ever to be made public.”

“What would you do to prevent it?” said the old ex-Capuchin. “You Jesuits are men with grand secrets; but amongst them all you have not yet found a remedy for a great evil. You have not a secret for effecting that a man shall not be human. I have been confessing both sexes for fifty years; the confessional is my main business. Now, up to this time my penitents have always been in the same tale; one most obstinate sin holds the sceptre and sways all the rest; and if God will not pass the sponge over it, hell will be paved with nothing but tonsures, and peopled only with celibataries.”

The Jesuit smiled, shook his head, and said he did not understand.

“Leave human nature as it is,” he said; ” men will not reform what has been made by an artificer who will suffer none to correct him. As for me, I think nature very good, especially on that point on which people so foolishly affect to consider her bad. One thing alone is important in the matter—namely, to know clearly whether it is intended that the church shall subsist, or shall share the fate of many another buried cult. Confession is the prime mover of the church; and without celibacy there is no confession.”

I replied to him that it is not an easy thing to make celibacy and the confessional go together; that it is not easy to contrive that the candle shall not take fire when the match is applied to it.

“Too true, alas!” said the old man immediately; u the lamb will remain safe and sound under the wolf’s tooth, before the young priest, with his passions glowing, can remain long without burning in the furnace of the confessional.”

“The evil,” said the Jesuit, “is not where you see it. No one is afraid of burning in the furnace; and the candle,” he added slily, “likes to be lighted and relighted as long as it lasts.”

“I begin to understand you,” said the old man. “Thou becomest thy name: Jesuit! ” (For venerated as he was by all, Father Fantini said thou and thee to everybody, from
the peasant to personages of the highest birth.*) “What you complain of is solely that the priest’s honour suffers, that confession is jeopardised, and even in danger of total wreck.”

“I say, by all means pluck the rose,” said the Jesuit; “but no pricking of the fingers! And to explain myself precisely, I will ask why means should not be taken to make it impossible that a priest should ever meet with mischances and be exposed to obloquy? Might there not be provided in every province establishments, in which the sex which suffers most from the results of human weakness might find a refuge free from care or fear, or any of those consequences which make it so often repent of having yielded? ”

“Why, you don’t mean to say,” exclaimed the old man, “that you would have a seraglio established in every district, to which none should have access but monks and priests, and where they should find accomplices comfortably boarded, lodged, and clothed at the expense of the church? ”

“Not exactly that, but something like it,” was the reply; and then the speaker looked on us with a scrutinizing glance, as if he hesitated to proceed. As for me, the reader may imagine my curiosity to know what he was driving at. All I did to lead him on was to let him understand that, although the octogenarian stood out against him,, he would not find me invincibly opposed to his notions.

“Still,” said I, “it would be favouring and encouraging a passion which, even when it encounters obstacles or consequences apparently the most likely to check it, still rushes forward with undiminished audacity and blindness. What would become of it if every obstacle* was removed and every untoward consequence was rendered impossible?”

“Had not David at least twenty wives?” he replied. “Whenever he was smitten with the beauty of a daughter of Eve, did he not make her his concubine? Would not any one who should now imitate him be regarded as the most abominable of libertines? And yet is it not written that David was a man after God’s own heart? Other holy men had a greater number of women. Solomon is not blamed for having had a thousand, but only for having taken them from among the heathen, and for having been beguiled by them to worship their gods. Why, then, should it be a crime to know one woman, when in former times, notwithstanding the oppression thence resulting for the woman, God was not offended with those who indulged so copiously in that respect?”

I will not repeat all he said on this subject, for it would be necessary to enter into a labyrinth of theological questions. But what strongly excited my attention was his mention of a Hospital of St. Roch, existing, he said, at Rome. The rules of the institution, which he explained to us in detail, are such as to secure any woman from the usual unpleasant consequences of female frailty. These regulations seemed fabulous to Father Fantini; but the Jesuit insisted so strongly on the reality of what he had been telling us, that for my part I did not hesitate to believe him. He met all our objections without flinching.

I myself was afterwards assailed with the same objections in Switzerland, when I offered an explanation of the passage in my text wherein mention is made of a Hospital of St. Roch. Fortunately I was able to put them entirely aside by means of a testimony that leaves no grounds for suspicion.

In the following passage, written by M. Poujoulat, that writer has unwittingly done me a great service:—

“One very admirable abode of charity is the arch-hospital of St. Roch, intended for pregnant women who wish to be delivered in secret. They are not asked either their names or their condition, and they may even keep their faces veiled during the whole time they are within the walls. Should one of them die, her name would not be inserted in any register, numbers being invariably used in the establishment instead of names. Young women, whose pregnancy, if known, would bring dishonour on themselves or their families, are received at St. Roch several months before their time, so as to prevent the shame and despair that might drive them to infanticide. The chaplains, physicians, midwives, and all who are employed in the establishment, are bound to strict secrecy, which is enjoined under the severest penalties; whoever should violate THIS LAW WOULD BE ARRAIGNED BEFORE THE TRIBUNAL OF the holy office. Every provision is made that nothing which occurs within St. Roch shall transpire out of doors. The arch-hospital is managed by pious widows. All strangers, be they who they may, are absolutely excluded; none but those who are employed in the hospital are allowed to cross the threshold. After their confinement, the patients can leave the house at any hour of the night they think most favourable, and dressed in garments that disguise their gait. The house, too, is isolated, and all around it is solitude and mystery.

“What can be more generous, noble, and Christian, than these pious cares to spread the cloak of pity over the errors of frailty!”

The suppression of foundling hospitals certainly cannot take place under existing circumstances without serious inconveniences; before they could be dispensed with, nothing less would be requisite than a fundamental change in the system of society. As for the institution of St. Roch, there is, after all, nothing in it very generous or very Christian. In what interest has it been founded? Who are the authors of its regulations? They are an immense number of celibataries, who have but too strong an interest in concealing by any and every means the vast evils of a false celibacy. What is really surprising is, that those who profess themselves the guardians of the public morals, and who inveigh against vice and debauchery as a consequence of the incredulity of the age, should be the very persons who display such ingenuity in inventing the most efficacious means for screening the licentious from public observation. What a sublime effort of piety it is to rid oneself of every thorn, and to enjoy the perfume of the rose without fear, as the Jesuit expressed himself! That same cloak of pity, spread with pious care over the errors of frailty, would have been called an abominable invention, had it been woven by other hands.

“The sacred groves,” said our Jesuit, “must by all means be rendered inaccessible to every profane eye, and the rash intruder must be laid low by the avenging thunder.”

The ex-Capuchin, pursuing the same imagery, and alluding to a great number of monks and priests whom he had long confessed, replied—“As for what you call the sacred grove, I have handled a great deal of its timber, and found it all rotten and worm-eaten: the worm was always the same. It is a very bad sort of timber, indeed.”

“It is one,” said the Jesuit, looking particularly at me, “that can be made to shine like the purest gold.”

When he was about to quit us, I asked his name. “Is it his name you ask? ” said the old Capuchin; “but do you not know that a Jesuit of the superior grades, who is on a mission, must have at least as many different names as there are hours in the day? What a child you are! He has come to feel our pulses, and that is a reason the more why he should invent a name on .the spot.” Upon this, the Jesuit opened the door and left us, with a sardonic smile exclaiming, “It is no lying proverb that says, ‘There is nothing simpler and slier than a Capuchin.”

“I know a truer one,” retorted the old man, “and that is, ‘It takes seven Capuchins to make a Jesuit.'” We parted with a hearty laugh on both sides.

But to come to the fact I alluded to just now. The Rev. Mr. Hartley, an Anglican minister, to whom I had imparted the Secret Plan in Geneva, after having come to me three or four times to read it, told me he did not doubt its authenticity; that to suppose it my own work would infer my possession of qualities and conditions of which I was entirely destitute; but that he thought I had let myself be tempted to add to it the pages concerning celibacy, by way of a climax to all the rest. “This part of the work,” he said, (Secret Plan, I should never have ventured to go so far.”

I then narrated to him everything concerning the Hopital St, Rock, I could not enumerate all the objections with which he assailed me, and with such force as to silence me completely. There were moments, even, when I fancied I had been made the dupe of a forged tale; and I was quite appalled when I contemplated the picture which my reverend friend drew of the consequences flowing from those regulations of the Hospital of St. Roch, which the Jesuit so much admired.

The Anglican minister was not favourable to the publication of the Secret Plan, Though he believed that the tactics described in it were real, and was convinced that to them Jesuitism owes its most brilliant conquests, yet he too, like many others, thought it imprudent and dangerous to initiate the multitude into all these stratagems. He again attacked me keenly on the pages which he averred were my work.

“Supposing such an institution existed,” said he, “could any man of sense believe that it could have remained occult? Would married persons have abstained from denouncing it, or at least holding it up to public derision? It would thus have become known, and would have broken down before it could have made any great way. Think how long Rome has been visited by legions of English, who explore and anatomise it more closely than the Romans themselves. Consider how much ridicule and opprobrium is cast on our clergy for having rejected celibacy; what finer opportunity could they have had to lay bare, to the disgrace of the Romish clergy, the expedients by which they secure themselves against all scandal? Yet not a word has ever been written to that effect. Had I no other argument than this, I should deem it invincible; but there are others besides of a higher order. I know how institutions, evidently bad, come to be submitted to through the force of centuries, heedlessness, the tyranny of habit, or potent interests. But most of them sprang up in barbarous times, and were formed little by little. Now, as for the regulations in question, if they existed, we should have to admit that they were the work of our own times, and that they had been planned, not piecemeal and gradually, but in one bulk, for the sole purpose of giving free course to the vices of the clergy! And who are those who should have proposed to themselves such an aim? Not one, or many priests, but the whole body of the prelates, with the pope at their head. I cannot bring myself to attribute to them such consummate depravity as this would infer. However I dislike Rome, I cannot possibly believe that a numerous body of men who respect themselves, who are watched by the public, and have formidable enemies, could conspire together to systematize the impunity of debauchery, and even take extraordinary pains to put it at its ease! Why, it would be a vast brothel, under high protection, and screened from infamy. The encouragement to crime would here be flagrant. You would have done better,” he concluded in a tone of severity, “not to put forward this fable.

The crimes of Rome are weighty enough without inventing others to charge her with. These objections stand like a wall of brass, which nothing can shake.”

Any one who had seen me would have been sure that my cause was lost. I really knew not what to say, so exceedingly strong did his arguments appear even in my own eyes. As for the pages of the Secret Plan that relate to celibacy, had the world argued against me, of course it could not have made me believe that a thing belonged to me which did not.

Some months afterwards, when turning over several new works in a bookseller’s, I lighted on M. Poujoulat’s, and found in it the passage I have quoted. How great was my delight! I hurried off instantly with the volume in my hand to Mr. Hartley, who was just returned from a journey to Nice. Before conquering him in my turn, I wished to resuscitate the question. He appeared vexed at my audacity, and pressed me with objections still more pointed than those I have already reported. I let him enjoy his triumph, and my defeat appeared consummated. Logic, common-sense, and rules, were all for him. Meanwhile, in order to make him fully persuaded of the credit due to the authority on which I was about to base my proof, I made him read certain passages in which M. Poujoulat speaks of his relations with Gregory XVI., his docility with regard to the censorship, and his unbounded zeal for the triumph of Catholicism; after this, I laid before him the passage quoted above.

He was stupified. He read it two or three times, and at last confessed that he was forced to yield to evidence, and did not conceal from me that until then he had looked on me with great distrust. He frankly acknowledged his injustice, and exclaimed, “This Rome! this Rome! it bewilders the reason. We cannot apply to it any of the known and ordinary rules of judgment: it tramples on them all; it makes real what seems impossible; and we may well say of it that truth is stranger than fiction.”

One is fortunate when he can refute his antagonist’s arguments in this manner. One plain fact suddenly demolished an immense fabric: the wall of brass fell to the ground.

But do we not at this moment witness events, for good and for ill, which, if they had been predicted yesterday, would have been rejected as incredible? A pope is intent on progress; a government born of revolution is making itself the support of the Jesuits in Switzerland; frightful crimes are committed in high places; and the official regions are flooded with a corruption, the possibility of which would have been utterly disbelieved seventeen years ago.

Had it been announced some months ago that there was about to appear a book proving that the conclave in which Ganganelli was elected pope, had been a sink of venality and simony, in which nearly all the courts of Europe and a considerable number of cardinals had dabbled, and that Ganganelli had been elected only on condition of abolishing the Jesuits, no one would have believed the assertion, although the author had affirmed that he had seen and read the documents proving all this turpitude. Yet we are constrained to admit no less, now that M. Cretineau Joly comes forward with his proofs to establish this strange fact.

“When I had finished,” he says, “I stood aghast at my own work; for above the throng of names that jostle together for mutual dishonour, there is one which the Apostolic See appeared to cover with its inviolability. Princes of the church, for whom I have long cherished a respectful affection, entreated me not to rend the veil that concealed such a pontificate from the world’s eyes. The General of the Company of Jesus, who had so many strong motives for being interested in the discoveries I have made, added his entreaties to those of some cardinals. In the name of his order, and for the honour of the Holy See, he besought me, almost with tears in his eyes, to give up the publication of this history. Even the wish and authority of the sovereign pontiff, Pius IX., were invoked in the counsels and representations of which my work was the object.

“To a Catholic, how painful it is to detect princes of the church in flagrant acts of lying and venality; still more painful to see a sovereign pontiff timidly resisting the iniquity he encouraged by his ambition, and annihilating himself on the throne, when he had done so much to ascend it. But does not such a spectacle, which no doubt will never be repeated, does it not inspire a sentiment of sorrow which history cannot help recording? Is not the crime of the supreme priest equal to the crimes of the whole people? Does it not surpass them in the eyes of the Eternal Judge?

“The world swarms with writers who have the genius of evil: to us there remains only the boldness of truth. The moment is come to speak it to all. It will be sad both for the Chair of St. Peter and for the Sacred College, and for the whole Catholic world.”

We are free to admit everything except the tears and supplications of the General of the Jesuits. It was rather he, we think, who believed that the time was come for drawing from their concealment documents long collected, and that it was he who “excited the writer to unveil the mystery of iniquity,” and to make known that when the Company was abolished, “then was seen the abomination in the temple.” Vainly would M. Cretineau Joly put the order of Jesuits out of question in this matter; it is a stratagem which we see through. It is to no purpose he exclaims, “I must boldly declare that there is not only want of agreement, but complete disagreement between the author and the Fathers of the Company of Jesus.” This is going too far, and pointing out the battery by dint of too much pains to mask it. His efforts to maintain that the original manuscripts did not come to him from the Jesuits, are equally unfortunate. Who more than the Jesuits could possess the art of insinuating themselves everywhere, inveigling, and employing thousands of agents all over Europe to get hold of secret papers carefully put away and kept in all the chanceries, and the most mysterious diplomatic correspondences? For it is in these terms M. Cretineau himself characterizes the documents he has in his hands, and the almost insurmountable difficulties of getting possession of them. It is amazing and inexplicable that those who were the most implicated by these documents did not make haste to destroy them immediately after the conclave; for whilst they existed, personages of the highest rank, including even a pope, were exposed to the danger of being rendered infamous in history. Here are two enigmas which shock the reason, and which it would be exceedingly difficult to admit if the fact were not indisputable.

One is tempted to believe, from the manner in which M. Cretineau Joly defends himself, that far from its being his intention to prove that he does not derive all these original manuscripts from the Jesuits, it is, on the contrary, his aim to let that fact be understood; for the argument he uses to put the Jesuits out of question, implicates them more than ever.

“At what period, or by what mysterious ramifications/’ he says, “could they have deceived or suborned all the ambassadors, all the conservators of the archives?

“No doubt,” he says, speaking hypothetically of the Jesuits, “they have possessed these documents since an unascertained period; why did they never make use of them during their suppression?

“The Jesuits, then, have not furnished me with any of these documents, for the very simple reason that such pieces could never have been in their archives. They have done all in their power to stop the work; but they have failed, because I have thought that in conscience I ought not to keep the light under a bushel.”

So then M. Cretineau, an ordinary individual, has been able, alone and unaided, to accomplish that very difficult thing which would have been impossible for such a company as that of the Jesuits.

Having given these proofs that he is not the “liege man of the Company,” he is more happy in his replies to those who have attacked his book as a romance.

“If,” says he, “the letters of Bernis (one of the cardinals in the conclave) stood alone, without any other warrant than his word, we hold that doubt would be allowable, and we should doubt; but it is not he alone who, for the amusement of his idle hours, invents all these events, histories, and simoniacal projects, of which he makes himself the echo, the accomplice, or the censor. Outside the conclave intrigue marches with head erect, backed by ministers and ambassadors whose correspondence strikingly coincides with the romance which some would fain attribute to the cardinal. But these diplomatic correspondences show as much as possible a common bond and centre; they dovetail, in the cabinets of Versailles, Vienna, Madrid, Naples, and Lisbon, with other dispatches which contain the same plans and avowals.

“The simoniacal conspiracy is manifest. Bernis and Cardinal Orsini repudiate it at first, but afterwards they join in it; and if this immense process were tried before a jury of bishops, or merely of upright men, do you suppose that after examination of the documents cited in the work, the election and the reign of Clement XIV. would not he regarded as one of the sores of the Apostolic See?”

Let us take note of this language: it will be of importance to remember it. A little further on he protests that, notwithstanding all he has been saying, “it never entered his thoughts to invalidate the election of Ganganelli.” His defence is nothing but a series of legerdemain, of subtilties and sophisms, denying on the one hand what he affirms on the other. But indeed the cause he defends makes all these contradictions inevitable.

“In my eye$,” he says, “and by the documents I have published, Pope Clement XIV. (Ganganelli) has never been sullied with the crime of simony, properly so called. Ambition led him astray. A victim to the position in which he placed himself, he has incurred the eulogy of the enemies of unity —a eulogy which for a priest, a bishop, above all for a pope, acting in the plenitude of his apostolic authority, is the most disgraceful of condemnations. This pope, whose name becomes popular only at moments when the enemy’s batteries are playing upon the See of Rome—this Ganganelli, who is deified whenever revolutionists affect an air of compunction in order to arrive the faster at their ends— I have represented struggling with the calamities he accumulated round St. Peter’s chair; and I have felt for him the pity due to his private virtues and his misfortunes. There is a wide difference between this sentiment and desertion of the cause of justice. The memory of Clement XIV. had always been attacked and extolled without convincing proofs. Now, public opinion may, in safety of conscience, hear and determine this great suit. When the time shall have come, I will speak out the rest.

“There were attempts at simony,” he says again, “on the part of the ambassadors, ministers, and Spanish cardinals. Terror, intrigue, and motives of family interest, were assiduously employed to sway some cardinals in the conclave. Ganganelli was lured away by ambition beyond his duties and his most secret wishes: he desired the papacy, thinking perhaps that his heart was set on a work beneficial to Christendom; he entered into a sort of an engagement. If this does not constitute simony—and we are firmly persuaded that it does not—let us add, nevertheless, that such a manner of acting in a prince of the church borders very closely on scandal and corruption. Furthermore let us add, that the words of the cordelier to Cardinal Castelli are an evidence of knavery which everybody will condemn.”

The last lines of this fragment are glaringly inconsistent with the first; concession follows concession, until at last we have it admitted that Ganganelli’s conduct borders very closely on scandal and corruption, and that he displays knavery. Would the reader have more? The same writer beholds in him only “a pope who made cunning his ladder.” And this he calls a sort of an engagement. There is not even a trace of simony, he says. Wherefore, then, such bitter reproaches, as though he had been the worst of popes? If he was under no formal and explicit engagement, then his brief was his free act and deed; and in suppressing the Jesuits, he was really actuated by the grave and imperative motives he alleges. The abolition was, therefore, the work of five years’ reflection, and of the conviction arrived at by this pope, that the order was dangerous to the church, and would finally hurry it to destruction. Ganganelli would thus be the most innocent of all concerned, and quite unconnected with all the ^villanous schemes and infamous manoeuvres. The venal compact is, nevertheless, proved in the most irrefragable manner: it is the very basis of the book, and that book is nugatory if Clement XIV. was not a party to the compact. Now, the words of the same writer, on which he rests all the importance of his book, are clear and precise, and they do implicate Ganganelli.

“The bargain” he says, “which gave him to the church, has hitherto been always denied by the Jesuits and by several annalists. We have cast an unexpected light on this point; with the documents before us, which we have exhumed, doubt is no longer possible .”

These discoveries have appeared so strange and incredible, that some have even ventured to contest their validity; others on all hands demand the complete publication of the original manuscripts.

I will now mention a curious specimen of the disputes between the cardinals in this conclave into which we have been enabled to peep. The prelate attacked was one of Voltaire’s friends.

“Overwhelmed with reproaches, Bernis tried to recover his position by starting personal considerations, and he said, “Equality ought to prevail among us; we are all here by the same right and title.’ Whereupon old Alexander Albani, raising his red cardinal’s hat, forcibly exclaimed, ‘No, Eminence, we are not all here by the same right and title; for it was not a courtesan that placed this hat on my head.’

“The recollection of the Marquise de Pompadour, evoked in the conclave, closed the mouth of Cardinal Bernis. The allusion told.”

Such a cardinal knew too well with whom he had to do not to be able to retort with the same force. But what is really astonishing is, that although it be confessed that the conclave was a downright mart, wherein the movement of the market from hour to hour, and the price current of consciences were noted and recorded—and although, in spite of all efforts to disguise the truth, it is evident that such of the cardinals as sided with the Jesuits were also the subjects of similar temptations—notwithstanding all this, M. Cretineau Joly has yet written such words as these:

“We may assert, that at no time did the Sacred College consist of more pious and edifying members. The exceptions in this respect are few.”

The author is deliberately resolved on heaping infamy upon this conclave, and at the very same time proving its almost spotless innocence.

If still stronger proofs are required that Ganganelli must have consented, must have owned accomplices, and bound himself by promises, here, according to the same writer, is what happened immediately upon the pope’s accession.

“The distribution of the high functions of the Roman court is made by the diplomatic body. Pagliarini, the bookseller, who, under the protection of Pombal, inundated Europe and Rome itself with his pamphlets against the Holy See and against good morals, obtained by the brief cum sicut accepimus the decoration of the Golden Spur.

Thus Pombal ennobled him whom Clement XIII. had condemned to the galleys, and he asked for a cardinal’s hat for his brother. Every one strove to secure an equivalent for the part he had taken in Ganganelli’s nomination; every one insisted on high office, and trafficked on his suffrage to secure a hold on the helm of the church. One would have imagined that the constitutional system had invaded the conclave, such was the throng of craving intriguers and proteges. It was the day of self-seeking, the day of wages.”

The elevation of popes by corrupt influences, and even by crime, is no new thing. Although in times of censorship and inquisition, history could not know or relate every thing, yet it has recorded scandals, trafficking and bargains, enough to hinder our being surprised at anything. Still they would have us believe that the Holy Spirit always presides at the elections of the Roman pontiffs; only, those who thus speak are forced to own that, whereas it formerly spoke by the lips of the clergy and the people, some cardinals have since succeeded in monopolizing it.

In fine, never could one have believed, never could one have dared to suspect, that so many ambassadors, ministers, princes, and cardinals, could have concerted together, without the least shame, to commit the greatest of sacrileges. The conclave in which this took place would still to this hour be regarded as one of the most edifying, were it not that from it issued the pope who abolished the order of the Jesuits. What was necessary in order that a mystery, which had bo long remained impenetrable, should be unsealed, was that the pride and vanity of a potent congregation should be brought in play. Nothing less was requisite than the interest of such a corporation as that of the Jesuits, in order that the most profound secrets should be plucked from the archives of all the courts of Europe, no one knows how. I repeat, that if all had been said without that mass of proofs which are ready to be produced, the objections would have appeared insurmountable.

One word more, while we are on the subject, as to the strange work of an advocate of the Company of Jesus.

“Full of reverence for the pontifical authority,” says M. Cretineau Joly, “we do not pronounce judgment on an act that emanated from the apostolic chair.”

What, you do not pronounce judgment? Your humility and reverence are but contempt. You have declared null and void the suppressing brief, and you abstain from judging? Can any condemnation be stronger? But let that pass.

If there be any fact beyond question, it is that Ganganelli’s death was most horrible, that the poison infiltrated into his very bones had dissolved every part of his body, so that all who saw him were terror-stricken. It is known, through the testimony of others beside Cardinal Bernis, “that from the day of his elevation he was afraid of dying by poison.” Now the apologist of the Jesuits, taking upon himself to be the biographer of Clement XIY., makes haste to pass over this perilous subject. He makes scarcely any account of the most ascertained facts, but takes pleasure in exhibiting the pontiff as a prey to the most poignant agonies of remorse, shrieking out the words, “O God, I am damned! Hell will be my portion. There is no remedy left!” He adds, that the pope soon after his elevation became insane. “His insanity began,” says he, 44 on the day he ratified the suppression of the Jesuits!” So the pope who gave audience to a great number of persons, whose language excited admiration, and who for five years studied the question of the Jesuits, was only a madman! ** In the history of the sovereign pontiffs,”

concludes the avenger of the Jesuits, ” he is the first and only one who suffered this degradation of humanity.” Nothing less would have been an adequate punishment for the greatest of crimes.

But now it is the denouement, which, above all things, is worth knowing. It was requisite to renovate the good name of Ganganelli, and it belonged to the Jesuits to do this for their own greater glory. The expedient employed for this purpose is not new; recourse is had to miracle, and a legend is invented.

Saint Alfonso Signori has been canonised in these latter days. I have been able closely to observe how this sort of affairs is managed. The theologian Guala, of whom I have already spoken, was among the most active on the occasion, and spared no intrigues or efforts towards bringing about the canonisation. Could this great supporter of the Jesuits abstain from taking part with many others in rearing an altar to one of the greatest friends of the Company? The new saint was bishop in one of the cities of Sicily when Ganganelli died. His name was used, and the story was put forth that he remained for several hours entranced and seemingly dead; and that when he came to himself he narrated to some confidential friends that he had just been witness to the pope’s last moments; that God had heard his prayers, and caused the pontiff s madness to cease, in order that he might repent; that he had spent his last moments in bewailing his crime, and asking pardon of the Almighty for his suppression of the sons of Loyola, and that he died reconciled to God, and saved.* How indeed could we suppose that God had not received him into grace, since he died reconciled to the Jesuits?

A third of a century before the French Revolution, a vast change was taking place, as in our day, in the minds of men. Everything was preparing for a decisive crisis. Then, as now, the Jesuits, in their system of teaching, represented the most obstinate immobility, and the most retrograde doctrines. Men craved for more air, light, and life; and the Jesuits and their adherents everywhere strove to stifle these aspirations.

“They held in their hands,” the panegyrist himself avows it, “the future generations, and they acted as a clog on the movement begun. This order has appeared as the most formidable rampart of Catholic principles. It was against it that the storm immediately directed itself. To reach the heart of Catholic unity it was necessary to pass over the bodies of the grenadiers of the church.”

Great, however, is the difference between those times and ours. Then the upper classes, intoxicated with philosophy, and knowing by experience what were the designs of the Jesuits, spared no efforts for the abolition of the order. But a pope alone could accomplish their wishes. Now the Company was so identified with Rome, and so indispensable to it, that nothing short of the combined strength of the greatest powers could sever the connection. Even this was not enough; they had already demanded this abolition without success. Two preceding popes had begun by refusing, and when at last they had declared their design to suppress the Jesuits, death had soon cut short their projects. Success was, therefore, believed to be impossible, except by means of a pope created by the princes themselves, and thereby seriously compromised. Now to obtain such a pope it was necessary to manoeuvre and use intrigues as potent as those employed by the Jesuits. The cells of the Vatican were conquered by a hostile spirit—by the very spirit of the encyclopedists which had become the possessor of thrones. It was a duel to the death, but the younger combatant was at last the victor. There issued from the conclave a chief of the church better adapted to the spirit of the age, and acquainted with its requirements. And yet he took good care not to abolish the Company forthwith; he waited, and postponed the matter even for several years. He wished, before he struck the blow, to collect proofs of extreme weight, and formidable by their numbers; but it turned out, as he had predicted, that in signing the brief which suppressed the Jesuits, he signed his own death-warrant.

As for all those monarchs, ministers, and diplomatists, who knew no rest until the abolition took place, fortunately they did not perceive what would be its remote consequences. They rejoiced to see that Rome was about to lose her most valiant and able soldiers. Remembering how their ancestors had humbled themselves in the dust before her, and let themselves be beaten with rods, they believed that they were at last sole masters, that the tables would be turned, that the clergy would become their tools, and receive their orders. On either side there was no question of the people; it was regarded as nothing. But unconsciously they worked for its advantage, and prepared the way for its advancement, whether by the new philosophic ideas with which they inundated Europe, or by overthrowing the strongest bulwark that restrained it. They could not fail themselves to be swept aWay by the bursting flood. Such blindness was providential.

“Rome discharged her best soldiery,” observes M. Cretineau, “on the very eve of the day on which the Holy See was about to be attacked on all points simultaneously. The Jesuits, while they obeyed the pontifical brief, thought it was their duty not to desert the post entrusted to their guard.”

Here was a model of perfect submission! The Jesuits alone know how to obey thus. As an institute they were absolutely bound to subsist no longer. But no, it is their privilege never to be liable by any possibility to be accused of revolt. The less they obey the greater is their submission. M. Cretineau’s book is a collection of contradictions, posted by way of double entry, and very regularly balanced.

An immense revolution had convulsed the world; Napoleon had in vain endeavoured to turn it to his own profit; but the same ideas which had raised him so high had ceased to support him when they had been betrayed and put in peril, and so he was plunged living into the abyss. This terrible lesson, like many others, taught nothing to those who came from exile to resume the sceptre. The volcano of the new ideas did but smoulder; the Jesuits persuaded the powers that they had the means and the strength to extinguish it. All that was requisite was that they should have the young generation in their hands. They imagined that, as in past times, they should succeed in making God’s name a means of propping up the most intolerable abuses and the most iniquitous privileges. But this insensate project was met by a proportionate reaction; the ideas of progression and freedom would not submit to be stifled, and they resumed the conflict—a conflict which M. Cretineau calls an impious rebellion, a work of perfidy and imposture.

“Ever since 1823,” he says, “it is not individual malice that seeks to beguile a class of individuals; there is a permanent conspiracy against the truth, and, above all against the good sense of the multitude. All means are employed to pervert it.”

Although the thing is known, it is not amiss to recollect what he means by the truth, and by conspiring against it. It is important to institute a comparison between the epoch of which we are speaking and our own; between the undisguised language then held by the upholders of the old system of society, and that which their successors now hold. At the very time when the Jesuits were occupied with the Secret Plan, M. de Remusat thus expressed himself:— u The new year, or 1824. Questions of a ponderer. “A grand project occupies the minds of the mighty of the Old World. They would fain bring back the New World to its infant state, and strangle it in its cradle in the swaddling-clothes in which it has been so long kept. The age has been accused, condemned, and anathematised by them. Crowned Europe has conceived the design of proving to the human race that it is wrong to be what it is; to time that it ought not to destroy; to the present that it ought to be the past. And one would almost say that this strange enterprise is beginning to succeed; one would say so, were one to judge from the stifled wail of the oppressed. But raise your eyes towards the thrones, and there you see faces pale beneath the diadems, and anxious eyes incessantly turned to the sceptre, as if to be assured that it has not slipped from the grasp. The anxiety of the victors is the consolation of the vanquished.”

The same writer thus describes the system with which it was sought to innoculate France in those days:—

“Passive obedience, unlimited submission, in one word, despotism, were pleaded with the best faith in the world. Fear ahd flattery did not neglect so fair an opportunity to speak like good faith. Never was it more easy to bend without degradation, to be frail without shame; the slave of arbitrary power became the friend of order; the absence of every original, or merely independent idea, was preached up under the name of good sense; we were taught to respect even error, and to regard enlightenment as an abuse of thought. Thus served at once by faith and hypocrisy, leading in its train all the most heterogeneous prejudices, subduing the minds of men by admiration, their hearts by lassitude, their characters by fear, the genius of absolute power set about re-erecting its throne by heaping up the ruins of the old regime on the foundations laid by the Revolution.”

What was the lever put in operation? It was religion, as though enough had not already been done to render it odious by all the oppressions attempted in its sacred name. A committee was organised. The Jesuits, who had no doubt suggested it, were its managing advisers. The Holy Alliance supported it. Its affiliations ramified through all countries of Europe. M. Capefigue, as quoted by M. Cretineau himself, speaks of it in the following terms:—

“The first organisation of the party was connected with the religious congregations. Under the presidency of Viscount Mathieu de Montmorency and the Duke de la Rochefoucault DoudeauviUe there was formed in Paris a central congregation, the statutes of which were simple at first, and had for their object the propagation of religious and monarchial ideas. The congregation received every Catholic who was presented by two of its members; it was to extend to the schools and educational institutions, and, above all things, it was to lay hold on youth. When a young man wished to enter the association, his proposers were asked what influence he would exercise. If he was professor or member of a college, it was made a condition that he should propagate the good principles among the pupils. If he had fortune or high station, he engaged in like manner to employ them for the defence of religion and monarchy. Meetings were held twice a-week for prayer, innocent games, particularly billiards, and to report progress. Every Sunday the Abbe Freyssinous preached before a numerous audience, and waged war upon philosophy and the age in his elegantly composed sermons. It was against Gibbon and Voltaire that M.‘Freyssinous strove with much more pomp than point; and he never failed to exhibit in favourable contrast the then present times, and to commend the beneficent influence of the clergy and of religion, and the necessity of strengthening the altar and the throne. These sermons were well attended. The politicians of the royalist party, some of them epicureans and unbelievers, were assiduous hearers of the abbe. It was a way of putting one’s self in a good light. The congregation had branches in the provinces. In those days there was a rage for obtaining admission into the congregation, and the reason of this was simple:—there was no having powerful patronage or lucrative places unless one was a member.”

“Such,” says the advocate of Jesuitism, disdainfully resuming the discourse after this quotation, “such is the origin of the occult power so gratuitously attributed to the congregation. That power has existed, it has been exercised, but absolutely apart from, and independently of the congregation. The royalist coteries concealed their political manoeuvres under its name; the liberal party seized upon that name to frighten France with the noise it wanted to make. The enemies of the church and the monarchy admirably calculated their blows; they depopu- larised the royalists, and hung a cloak of hypocrisy on the shoulders of Christians. Tet all this was but a part of what was to be done. They annihilated the present generation, but the grand thing was to kill the future.”’)’ As for the Jesuits, it is a great mistake to suppose that at that period they concerned themselves about anything else than the interests of religion. They reorganised their houses, and founded new ones with purely pious views, that was all.

The Bourbons, however, who had put themselves in the hands of the Jesuits, paid dearly for their excessive complaisance. The sun of July forced their evil counsellors to keep themselves concealed for a while; but by degrees, as the bright luminary grew dim, they came forth again, and renewed the struggle, but in a reversed manner. For now the clergy, finding themselves compelled to fight against authority, yet unwilling frankly to embrace liberty, adopted that Machiavellic attitude which it is partly the object of the second portion of this work to make known. Thus we can account for the embarrassments and the contradictions of their apologists.

Many persons have inveighed against Eugene Sue for having dared to personify the Jesuitic genius in Rodin. They could not bring themselves to believe that a considerable number of men, and those, too, men invested with a religious character, could have concerted together to wear all sorts of masks and play all sorts of parts, in order to secure the services of all sorts of individuals for a work which every one would abhor if he knew its aim and scope. This system of graduated fraud, which it has been thought unjust to attribute to the majority of the Jesuits, have I not proved that it is fair to impute it to numerous writers, to preachers, and to a large portion of the upper clergy? Can there be a doubt that there exists among them a close compact, and a well understood mot d’ordre, to mystify not only Europe but the whole world?

We have sought to open the eyes of persons who may in good faith be or become accomplices, beguiled by artifices which often impose on the most adroit. We believe we have cast a flood of light into the theocratic sanctuary, and convinced the most obstinate that the dogma of suffocation and oppression, and the most despotic genius, evermore receive there divine honours, and that at this day the spirit of fraud, deprived of its old weapons, desperately defends its threatened empire by base sophisms and stratagems. Is it not time to purge the church from such foul impurities? But if this radical and divine reform proceeds not from Pius IX., if he lends an ear to those whose interest it is to turn him aside from the sublime task to which Providence invites him, and urge him upon the same erroneous courses as his predecessors, still the first steps he has taken will have immense results in spite of him and against him.

The Jesuits, as we have seen, have commissioned one of their liegemen to write the life of Ganganelli, in order to dismay and stop Pius IX. The dedication of the work is implied in this epigraph, A bon entendeur demimot, “A hint for one who can take it.”

After all, if, as some begin to fear, the reforms of Pius IX. are to be nothing but administrative ameliorations, and if Rome refuse to institute a religious renovation which is imperatively demanded by our epoch, we possess the means of forcing the Vatican to break silence, and acknowledge, as evangelical, doctrines adequate to the reach and dignity of modern thought. The documents sent forth by the Roman presses, to which we here allude, have been stamped by Catholic authority with all possible marks of approbation.

The following is an epitome of the principles thus solemnly recognized as having been primitively admitted by the church:—The people is sovereign; it is the sole source of all authority; every government which does not submit its deliberations and its acts to the control of the people is anti-christian. It follows thence that theocracy is convicted of rebellion. In fact, it is depicted in colours as severe as those which its most implacable enemies have employed to hold it up to execration. It would be impossible to prefer against it a more terrible bill of indictment, backed by a more overwhelming mass of decisive proofs. Its own organs confidentially predict to it that the impatient peoples will be driven to shake off an intolerable tyranny, if they despair of seeing it reformed; and they remind it of the mission it ought to have accomplished, and which consisted in reconciling and uniting men by love and justice, preventing their sufferings by an equal partition of burthens, bestowing its just remuneration on labour, and guaranteeing a real independence to each individual. Instead of this, the most formal avowal is made that this hierarchy, devoured with pride, drunk with pomp, enslaved to its own exclusive interests, has given itself out for infallible, not being so; that it has renounced the spirit of Christ, and would neither itself penetrate it, nor suffer others to do so. Therefore it is, that by the same hands is delivered to us the key of initiation into every evangelical work; the true sense of dogmas is unveiled; we now know what we are to think of miracles; reason and faith are astonished that a misunderstanding should so long have sundered them. It is said again and again in the documents we are speaking of that the reign of the dead letter must be abolished, for, as St. Paul says, “the letter hilleth, but the spirit giveth life and the same apostle tells us that the worship which is not rational is not Christian.

We venture to affirm, that the instructions, of which I merely state the heads, are more than sufficient to justify and call forth the largest and most radical reforms in the religious and the political world, and in the whole organisation of society. They emancipate the spirit of the Gospel from the prison of a fossilized religion.

Did I not possess these weapons of proof, I should perhaps have been forced to abstain from publishing the Secret Plan. Those who may remain incredulous as regards it, will be compelled, by irrefutable proofs, to admit a far more extraordinary fact, authenticated by documents that will silence all the cavilings of self-interest.

The fact, which I will make known in a special publication, concerns the seventeenth century and a part of the eighteenth. I will demonstrate that Voltairianism prevailed in Italy during a whole century before Voltaire; that those who attacked mysteries and dogmas with language and sarcasms like his, were not libertines repudiated and condemned by the religious authority, or a handful of savans whose incredulity was confined to the circle of the cultivated class; but that the attack on the foundations of religion and morality was made in the very churches, from the pulpit, and by numerous preachers; that the numbers who flocked to hear them were immense, and that they enjoyed the countenance of the bishops and prelates. This horrible disorder was practised in the most celebrated churches of Rome; it resisted the few feeble efforts made to put it down, and was still in existence when Voltaire appeared. The sacred buildings rang with loud shouts of laughter in approval of the most shameless commentaries. The acts of the patriarchs were held up to ridicule; the Song of Songs afforded an ample theme for obscene jesting; the visions of the prophets were turned into derision, and themselves treated as addle-headed and delirious. The Apostles were not spared, and it was taught that everything concerning them was mere fable. Finally, Christ himself was outraged worse than he had ever been by his most rancorous enemies, and was accused of criminal intercourse with the Magdalen, the woman taken in adultery, and the woman of Samaria. Thus was absolute irrelgion preached, and for so long a time did this poison flow from the pulpits. The Bible was scoffed at, and Christianity likened to a mythology.

My greatest strength has been derived from the documents I have briefly alluded to; and but for them I should have succumbed beneath the force of Dante’s apothegm, which many a time recurs to my mind:—”A man should always beware of uttering a truth which has all the aspect of a lie.” But as I could count on such a revelation, a thousand times stranger than the one I myself have just made, I hesitated no longer, being convinced that in our days, more than ever, these words of Jesus must be fulfilled, “There is nothing hidden that shall not be brought to light.”

THE END.