that the presence of the Jesuits in the Spanish dominions was extremely prejudicial, through their complicity in traitorous attempts, grasping and seditious spirit, fanaticism, disobedience, and intolerable pride. The unanimous decision of the members, the fiscales concurring, was that no discussion of the subject with the papal court should be entered into, and a mere acknowledgment of the receipt of the brief should be returned in answer.
Without discussing the merits of the charges preferred against the society for its conduct in Europe, or attempting to deny its worldliness in the acquisition of property and its selfish efforts to escape the burdens weighing upon other members of the church and the body politic in America, and without laying particular stress on its overbearing deportment, several instances of which have been recorded in the course of this history, it must be confessed that the Jesuits maintained, if not perfect purity of conduct, at least a degree of virtue that made them the exceptional members of a church which had at that time, but for them and a few other honorable exceptions, almost become an exemplar of vice. At all hours and seasons they were found performing the offices of religion and charity. The service of God in their churches was reverent and dignified. They spread education among all classes; their libraries were open to all. They
y otras naciones de Yndias, se han apoderado de la soberania.' It had treated Spaniards as enemies, depriving them of trade, and teaching them horrible things against the king's service, of all which the pope was ignorant. Even the spiritual care of the missions had been neglected by the Jesuits, according to their own confession in their intimate correspondence. Other charges were enumerated, one of the most serious being that the society had worked to bring about in Spain a change in the government to suit itself. Consulta del Consejo, in Papeles de Jesuitas, MS., no. 6, 1-9. According to Alaman, Disert., iii. 315-17, the king was induced to believe that the Jesuits had promoted a riot that occurred, with the purpose of deposing him, to prove which seditious papers were produced to him of such a nature that they could not be divulged without compromising the dignity of the crown and the decorum of the royal family. It was also asserted that Cárlos III. was chagrined at the Jesuits' opposition to a darling project of his, namely, the canonization of Juan Palafox, former bishop of Puebla and viceroy of Mexico, and of Brother Sebastian del Niño Jesus, who foretold him that he would be king of Spain, when he was not the heir presumptive.
