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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
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