erprise was commenced under the pretext of converting the Indians
of Paraguay. Within a few years the Jesuits formed an independent
republic, numbering thirty-one towns, with a population of a hundred
thousand souls. To render their power complete, they prohibited all
communication between the natives and the Spaniards and Portuguese,
forbidding them to learn the language of either country, and
implanting in the mind of the Indians an implacable hatred of both
Spain and Portugal. At length both courts became alarmed, and orders
were sent out to extinguish the usurpation. Negotiations were in the
mean time opened between Spain and Portugal relative to an exchange
of territory, and troops were ordered to effect the exchange.
Measures of this rank were unexpected by the Jesuits. They had
reckoned upon the proverbial tardiness of the Peninsular councils;
but they were determined not to relinquish their prize without a
struggle. They accordingly armed the natives, and prepared for a
civil war.

The Indians, unwarlike as they have always been, now headed by their
Jesuit captains, outmanoeuvred the invaders. The expedition failed;
and the baffled invasion ended in a disgraceful treaty. The
expedition was renewed in the next year, 1755, and again baffled. The
Portuguese government of the Brazils now made renewed efforts, and in
1756 obtained some advantages; but they were still as far as ever
from final success, and the war, fruitless as it was, had begun to
drain heavily the finances of the mother country. It had already cost
the treasury of Lisbon a sum equal to three millions sterling. But
the minister at the head of the Portuguese government was of a
different character from the race who had, for the last hundred
years, wielded the ministerial sceptres of Spain and Portugal. His
clear and daring spirit at once saw where the evil lay, and defied
the difficulties that lay between him and its cure. He determined to
extinguish the order of the Jesuits at a blow. The boldness of this
determination can be estimated only by a knowledge of the time. In
the middle of the eighteenth century, the Jesuits were the
ecclesiastical masters of Europe. They were the confessors of the
chief monarchs of the Continent; the heads of the chief seminaries
for national education; the principal professors in all the
universities;--and this influence, vast as it was by its extent and
variety, was rendered more powerful by the strict discipline, the