be made
acquainted with the law, which rendered men so perfect; to that law they
submitted and entered into society. Nothing can do more honour to religion
than to have civilized those nations and laid the foundations of an empire,
with no other arms than those of virtue[53]."

HALLER.

"The enemies of the society," says Haller, "disparage their best
institutions: they accuse them of inordinate ambition, on seeing a kind of
empire formed by them in distant regions; but what plan can be more
delightful, or more advantageous to humanity, than to assemble human beings
scattered widely among the gloomy forests of America, to win them from the
savage state, a state of wretchedness, to put an end to their cruel and
destructive wars, to {140} enlighten their minds with the truths of
religion, and to form them into a society like the state of mankind in the
golden age? Is this not taking up the character of legislator for the
happiness of men? The ambition, that produces so much good, cannot but be a
laudable passion. No virtue ever attains that purity, which men are apt to
exact; but neither is any virtue disfigured by the passions, while these
serve to promote the general happiness[54]."

MURATORI.

It is hardly necessary to observe, that Muratori's character for talents,
piety, and virtue, stands very high in the estimation of the learned. He
was a celebrated Italian writer, a fellow of the chief academies of Italy,
of the royal society of London, and of the imperial academy of Olmutz, and
he was consulted as the oracle of {141} the age by the literati of Europe.
He was born in 1672 and died in 1750. He was unconnected with the society
of the Jesuits, and the high praises he bestows upon them could, therefore,
only have been dictated by a just esteem and admiration. The following
extracts are from his work entitled, _Il Cristianessimo felice nella
missioni de Padri della Compagnia di Gesu nel Paraguai_; a work which may
serve as a commentary on the edicts, declarations, and manifestoes, of the
court of Portugal under the dictatorship of Pombal. "I could wish, that
some one among the enemies of the church of Rome, who carry their aversion
to the Jesuits so far as to asperse the zeal of those admirable
missionaries, and their purity of intention, in the laborious functions,
which they discharge among the infidels, would only accompany them awhile
in their apostolic excursions, to see and examine what they do, and what
they