nstration, from experience, that pure religion, steadily practised, is
the only source of human happiness. The new settlements, called
_Reductions_, of Brazil and Paraguay, were real fruits of the zeal of the
Jesuits. Solipsian empires, and gold mines to enrich the society, existed
only in libels[65].

{190}

The Jesuits were advancing, with gigantic strides, to the very centre of
South America, they were actually civilizing the Abiponian barbarians, when
their glorious course was interrupted by the wretched policy of Lisbon and
Madrid. The missionaries of South America were all seized like felons, and
shipped off, as so many convicts, to the ports of old Spain, to be still
farther transported to Corsica, and, finally, to the coasts of the pope's
states. One of these venerable men, Martin Dobrizhoffer, who had spent
eighteen years among the South American tribes, has given, in his _Historia
de Abiponibus_, the best account, that exists, of the field of his arduous
mission. His work is here mentioned, because it is not unknown in England,
and his testimony[66] proves the persuasion of the best men at Buenos
Ayres, in 1767, when the Jesuits were dismissed, that, if they had been at
all times properly supported, by the courts of Lisbon and Madrid,
especially {191} against the self interested European settlers, not a
barbarian, not an infidel, would then have been left in the whole extent of
South America. "This," says the author, "was boldly advanced from the
pulpit at Buenos Ares, in the presence of the royal governor, and of a
thronged auditory, and it was proved with a strength of argument, that
subdued all doubt, and wrought universal conviction." The impression must
have been strengthened by the subsequent dissolution of all the
_Reductions_, in consequence of the inability of the royal officers to
substitute other missionaries to those, whom they had ejected[67].

Different was the providence of the superiors {192} in the old society, to
perpetuate the race and regular succession of those wonderful men. If they
had sent out from Europe subjects already formed to every virtue and every
science, their virtues and their learning would have been almost useless,
without the knowledge and practical use of the barbarous idioms of the
Indian tribes. Every young Jesuit in Europe was first trained, during two
full years of noviciate, to the exact practice of religious virtues. He was
next applied, during five years, still in