f pope Clement XIV's
destructive brief, they were once more unmercifully pillaged, in despite of
the public faith, pledged in the _octroi_; and here the fangs of fiscal
avarice were sharpened to an uncommon edge, because it was the persuasion
of that despotic government, that, being Jesuits, they deserved no pity,
and, being English, they must be rich. At the same period, their large
college at Liege was stript of all its income, by the two courts of Munich
and Rome, and the inmates of the house were also here turned adrift,
without any allowance for their personal subsistence. In this utter
distress, a few of these persecuted men, who remained at Liege, not quite
dispirited by their calamities, were encouraged by the prince {226} bishop
of Liege, to form, within the old college, a school and a seminary of
priests. The plan was sanctioned by a brief of pope Pius VI; they found
friends, and unremitting labour and industry during twenty years advanced
their work to a degree of consistency, which merited the approbation and
confidence of the public. But all this was of no avail. Utter destruction
was to be their doom. In 1794, when the French armies, by one general
sweep, overturned, in the Low Countries, every thing that related to the
religion of Jesus Christ, they were finally dislodged and scattered; their
house and all their valuables were left to the disposal of those outrageous
freebooters; waggon-loads of their best books were converted into wadding
for the cannon; their mathematical and optical cabinet was pillaged; they
retired in sorrow, each to seek a refuge, with hardly a hope of seeing
better days. Thus terminated the English province of the society of Jesus.
A few of these ancient men, who have weathered the whole storm, are still
alive, {227} comforting their old age with the late public testimony of the
head of the church, that they deserved a better fate. Having availed
themselves of the indulgence of the British government, on leaving the
Netherlands they sought an asylum in their own country. They here subsist,
in the security of conscious innocence, fearless of the prejudices and
malice of a few unprovoked foes, who know not how to harrass them but by
the old weapons of misrepresentation and slander. They have pledged their
allegiance to their king and country, in the comprehensive oath of 1791;
they meddle not with general or county politics; _they seek no offices of
state_, that remaining stumbling bloc