mined to usurp every function, and thwart every
act of the civil government; that the confessors of the royal family,
though dismissed, continued to conspire; that they resisted the
formation of royal institutions for the renewal of the national
commerce; and that they excited the people to dangerous tumults, in
defiance of the royal authority.

Their intrigues comprehended every object by which influence was to
be obtained, or money was to be made. The "Great Wine Company," on
which the chief commerce of Portugal, and almost the existence of its
northern provinces depended, was a peculiar object of their
hostility, for reasons which we can scarcely apprehend, except they
were general jealousy of all lay power, and hostility to all the
works of Pombal. They assailed it from their pulpits; and one of
their popular preachers made himself conspicuous by impiously
exclaiming, "that whoever joined that company, would have no part in
the company of Jesus Christ."

The intrigues of this dangerous and powerful society had long before
been represented to the popes, and had drawn down upon them those
remonstrances by which the habitual dexterity of Rome at once saves
appearances, and suffers the continuance of the delinquency. The
Jesuits were too useful to be restrained; yet their crimes were too
palpable to be passed over. In consequence, the complaints of the
monarchs of Spain and Portugal were answered by bulls issued from
time to time, equally formal and ineffective. Yet even from these
documents may be ascertained the singularly gross, worldly, and
illegitimate pursuits of an order, professing itself to be supremely
religious, and the prime sustainer of the "faith of the gospel." The
bull of Benedict the XIV., issued in 1741, prohibited from "trade and
commerce, all worldly dominion, and the _purchase_ and _sale_ of
converted Indians." The bull extended the prohibition generally to
the monkish orders, to avoid branding the Jesuits especially. But a
bull of more direct reprehension was published at the close of the
year, expressly against the Jesuits in their missions in the east and
west. The language of this document amounts to a catalogue of the
most atrocious offences against society, humanity, and morals. By
this bull, "all men, and especially _Jesuits_," are prohibited, under
penalty of excommunication, from "making slaves of the Indians; from
selling and bartering them; from separating them from their wives and
chi