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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
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