order is essentially a political and not a Christian order, established to work upon the wealthy, and to obtain their suffrages.
In proof of this statement I need only quote a common phrase among middle-class Catholics, "If you are not rich or clever, never go near the Jesuits." They appreciate brains as much as money, for they can make good use of both, but you will never hear their praises sung by the poor, the "little" class, useful neither socially nor politically, through whom they cannot hope to advance their order and secure it prestige. The order was founded by an aristocrat and a soldier. Aristocratic it has ever since remained in its sympathies; and the moral of the Dreyfus affair has given us a good notion of the military principles of honour, justice, and truth which modern France owes to its training. For assuredly it is the Jesuits who have exercised a wider influence upon the educational forces of France than any other society; it is they who are the deadliest enemy of the Republic; and as they hold all the forts of tradition, aristocratic, fashionable, and military, France may be said to be in their hands. It is to be hoped that when posterity comes to judge the recent crisis through which France has passed it will not spare a society which deserves ill at the hands of humanity.
One of the things for which the Jesuits are to be praised or blamed, according as you may
