g in common under the sway of the general and
other superiors. Orders were given to close all the Jesuit houses. The
principle of religious liberty, which had been so long ignored, and was
at last beginning to dawn on men's minds, was gaining its first serious
victory by despoiling the Jesuits in their turn of that liberty for the
long-continued wrongs whereof they were called to account. A strange and
striking reaction in human affairs; the condemnation of the Jesuits was
the precursory sign of the violence and injustice which were soon to be
committed in the name of the most sacred rights and liberties, long
violated with impunity by arbitrary power.

Vaguely and without taking the trouble to go to the bottom of his
impression, Louis XV. felt that the Parliaments and the philosophers were
dealing him a mortal blow whilst appearing to strike the Jesuits; he
stood out a long while, leaving the quarrel to become embittered and
public opinion to wax wroth at his indecision. "There is a hand to mouth
administration," said an anonymous letter addressed to the king and
Madame de Pompadour, "but there is no longer any hope of government. A
time will come when the people's eyes will be opened, and peradventure
that time is approaching."

The persistency of the Duke of Choiseul carried the day at last; an edict
of December, 1764, declared that "the Society no longer existed in
France, that it would merely be permitted to those who composed it to
live privately in the king's dominions, under the spiritual authority of
the local ordinaries, whilst conforming to the laws of the realm." Four
thousand Jesuits found themselves affected by this decree; some left
France, others remained still in their families, assuming the secular
dress. "It will be great fun to see Father Perusseau turned abbe," said
Louis XV. as he signed the fatal edict. "The Parliaments fancy they are
serving religion by this measure," wrote D'Alembert to Voltaire, "but
they are serving reason without any notion of it; they are the,
executioners on behalf of philosophy, whose orders they are executing
without knowing it." The destruction of the Jesuits served neither
religion nor reason, for it was contrary to justice as well as to
liberty; it was the wages and the bitter fruit of a long series of wrongs
and iniquities committed but lately, in the name of religion, against
justice and liberty.

Three years later, in 1767, the King of Spain, Charles III.