ors to the great, and went into mercantile speculations, than I
would rich and favored clergymen in Protestant countries, who prefer ten
per cent for their money in California mines to four per cent in
national consols.

But the prosperity which the Jesuits had earned during their first
century of existence excited only envy, and destroyed the reverence of
the people; it had not made them odious, detestable. It was the means
they adopted to perpetuate their influence, after early virtues had
passed away, which caused enlightened Catholic Europe to mistrust them,
and the Protestants absolutely to hate and vilify them.

From the very first, the Society was distinguished for the _esprit de
corps_ of its members. Of all things which they loved best it was the
power and glory of the Society,--just as Oxford Fellows love the
_prestige_ of their university. And this power and influence the Jesuits
determined to preserve at all hazards and by any means; when virtues
fled, they must find something else with which to bolster themselves up:
they must not part with their power; the question was, how should
they keep it?

First, they adopted the doctrine of expediency,--that the end justifies
the means. They did not invent this sophistry,--it is as old as our
humanity. Abraham used it when he told lies to the King of Egypt, to
save the honor of his wife; Caesar accepted it, when he vindicated
imperialism as the only way to save the Roman Empire from anarchy; most
politicians resort to it when they wish to gain their ends. Politicians
have ever been as unscrupulous as the Jesuits, in adopting expediency
rather than eternal right. It has been a primal law of government; it
lies at the basis of English encroachments in India, and of the
treatment of the aborigines in this country by our government. There is
nothing new in the doctrine of expediency.

But the Jesuits are accused of pushing this doctrine to its remotest
consequences, of being its most unscrupulous defenders,--so that
_Jesuitism_ and _expediency_ are synonymous, are convertible terms. They
are accused of perverting education, of abusing the confessional, of
corrupting moral and political philosophy, of conforming to the
inclinations of the great. They even went so far as to inculcate mental
reservation,--thus attacking truth in its most sacred citadel, the
conscience of mankind,--on which Pascal was so severe. They made habit
and bad example almost a sufficient exculp