eir alliance with Austria. Then burst upon
them in France and the Netherlands, the hurricane of the Jansenist
controversy, when Pascal's Provincial Letters scathed them, and his
sentiments were even quoted (1679) by Innocent IX., against sixty-five of
their offensive propositions. Complaints were made against some of them by
the Iroquois, who had been converted by them, as would appear by the treaty
of peace (1682). In 1759, by an edict, they were declared guilty of
high-treason, and expelled from Portugal. Owing to difficulties at
Martinique under their deputy, Father La Vallette, and the declaration of
their general, Lorenzo Ricci, refusing to make any change in their
constitution (_sint aut non sint_), "let them be as they {101} are, or not
be," the king of France (1764) issued a decree for abolishing the order in
all the French states, as being a mere political society, dangerous to
religion, whose object was self-aggrandizement. In 1767 they were driven
out of Spain, and soon after from Naples, Parma, and Malta. And the voice
of public opinion at length compelled Pope Clement XIV. to publish his
famous bull, _Dominus ac Redemptor noster_, of July 21, 1773, by which the
society of Jesus was totally abolished in all the states of Christendom.
The society, however, did not become extinct. In 1780 they were thought to
have possessed themselves of the secrets of the Rosicrucians, and to have
taken a part in the schemes of the Illuminati. In 1787, an unsuccessful
attempt was made to revive the order under the name of the _Vicentines_.
Pius VII. restored the order, in 1814, upon the issuance of the bull,
August 7, _Solicitudo omnium_. In 1815 they were restored in Spain. Russia,
by an imperial ukase, March 25, 1820, banished them thence. Since then they
have been driven from Mexico, again restored by Santa Anna, and now, though
resident, they are politically powerless under the administration of
President Comonfort. They now seem to rely on the United States of America
as their chief asylum, and upon the valley of the Mississippi river and its
tributaries, as their basis of operations. Full and perfect freedom of
thought and speech, of religious toleration, and of mode of life, monastic
or {102} otherwise, insures to them a safe home in this country. They
possess a flourishing college at Georgetown, which may almost be considered
as part of the city of Washington, the capital of the United States. Also
one at Cincinnati, and