sequence of their extreme poverty.

We quote this passage to show to what extremities a people may be
reduced by individual mismanagement, and what important changes may
be produced by the activity of an intelligent directing power. The
king's letters-patent of 1756, establishing the company, provided at
once for the purity of the wine, its extended sale in England, and
the solvency of the wine provinces. It is only one among a thousand
instances of the hazards in which Popery involves all regular
government, to find the Jesuits inflaming the populace against this
most salutary and successful act of the king. At confession, they
prompted the people to believe "that the wines of the company were
not fit for the celebration of mass." (For the priests drink wine in
the communion, though the people receive only the bread.) To give
practical example to their precept, they dispersed narratives of a
great popular insurrection which had occurred in 1661; and both
incentives resulted in the riots in Oporto, which it required all the
vigour of Pombal to put down.

But the country and Europe was now to acknowledge the services of the
great minister on a still higher scale. The extinction of the Jesuits
was the work of his bold and sagacious mind. The history of this
event is among the most memorable features of a century finishing
with the fall of the French monarchy.

The passion of Rome for territory has been always conspicuous, and
always unsuccessful. Perpetually disturbing the Italian princes in
the projects of usurpation, it has scarcely ever advanced beyond the
original bounds fixed for it by Charlemagne. Its spirit of intrigue,
transfused into its most powerful order the Jesuits, was employed for
the similar purpose of acquiring territorial dominion. But Europe was
already divided among powerful nations. Those nations were governed
by jealous authorities, powerful kings for their leaders, and
powerful armies for their defence. All was full; there was no room
for the contention of a tribe of ecclesiastics, although the most
daring, subtle, and unscrupulous of the countless slaves and soldiers
of Rome. The world of America was open. There a mighty power might
grow up unseen by the eye of Europe. A population of unlimited
multitudes might find space in the vast plains; commerce in the
endless rivers; defence in the chains of mountains; and wealth in the
rocks and sands of a region teeming with the precious metals. The
ent