ved the Jesuits, in this their free country,
from the twenty-second year of Elizabeth to the thirtieth of Charles II.
This is all the progress that they made, in a full century, towards _their
own aggrandizement_, which, says Laicus, "is the main object of all their
labours[119]."

When the scene of blood was finally closed, in 1680, by the execution of
eight innocent Jesuits in one year, not to mention a dozen {323} others,
who died in jail, many of them under sentence of death, the Jesuits still
remained an inoffensive body of catholic missionary priests. Their object
was to assist their catholic brethren; and, having obtained some
foundations from the liberality of foreign potentates, they applied
themselves to give to the expatriated youth of their own country the
education, which the partiality of the laws denied them at home. In these
pacific occupations they persevered, without experiencing any jealousy on
the part of government, even during the two rebellions of 1715 and 1745;
because, since the accession of the House of Brunswick, it has been a
principle with our monarchs never to persecute any man for conscience,
never to harass inoffensive subjects.

At the present day, that royal principle, with all its consequences, and
they extend far, is widely diffused throughout the empire. Every man in it
acknowledges the impossibility of converting the millions of his majesty's
catholic subjects to any other assignable mode of faith; {324} and every
thinking man must feel the importance and, at the present day, the
necessity, of attaching these millions to the common cause of the empire,
and to the cordial support of one common government. Sound policy will
always forbear to sour and to fret subjects, by jealous suspicions and
invidious distinctions. It will always incline wise rulers of states to
provide, for their subjects, ministers of religion, who are firmly attached
to their government, and who may feel that they have nothing to fear from
it, while they do not provoke its sword. Such was the conduct of
continental governments in past times; and they everywhere judged it
prudent to intrust, in a great measure, the national education of their
youth to the active order of Jesuits, who, at the same time, were
preachers, and catechists, and confessors, and visitors of hospitals and
prisons; and who always had in reserve a surplus of apostles, armed with a
cross and a breviary, ready to fly to every point of the heave