East and West, they carried forward
extensive commercial undertakings, and had depots in various parts of
Europe. In these operations they were necessarily absolved from their
vows of poverty, and became immensely rich. In South America they
obtained a footing in Paraguay, and commenced their noble attempt at the
civilization of the Indians, bringing them into communities, teaching
them social usages, agricultural arts, and the benefits arising to
themselves and the community from labour. They gave them a military
organization, subdivided according to the European system, into the
customary arms--infantry, cavalry, artillery; they supplied them with
munitions of war. It was their hope that from this basis they should be
able to spread the rule of the Church over America, as had been done in
preceding ages over Europe.

[Sidenote: Causes of their suppression.] An intolerable apprehension of
their invisible presence and unscrupulous agency made all Europe put
them down at last. The amenities of exquisite courteousness, the
artifices of infinite dissimulation, cannot for ever deceive. Men found,
by bitter experience, that within the silken glove there was an iron
hand. From their general in Rome, who was absolute commander of their
persons and unchallengeable administrator of their prodigious wealth,
down to the humblest missionary who was wearing away his life among the
Andes, or on the banks of the Hoang-ho, or in the solitary prairies of
Missouri, or under the blazing sun of Abyssinia--whether he was
confessing the butterfly ladies of Paris, whispering devilish
suggestions into the ear of the King of Spain, consoling the dying
peasant in an Irish cabin, arguing with mandarins in the palace of the
Emperor of China, stealing away the hearts of the rising generation in
the lower schools and academies, extorting the admiration of learned
societies by the profundity of his philosophy and the brilliancy of his
scientific discoveries--whether he was to be seen in the exchanges and
marts of the great capitals, supervising commercial operations on a
scale which up to that time had been attempted by none but the
Jews--whether he was held in an English jail as a suspected vagabond, or
sitting on the throne of France--whether he appeared as a great landed
proprietor, the owner of countless leagues in the remote parts of India
or South America, or whether he was mixing with crowds in the streets of
London, and insinuating in Protest