Franco followed next in the same course of proscription. The Jesuits had made themselves many enemies in that country by their long and bitter persecution of the Janeeniets, and their controversies with that sect had brought much obloquy upon their inetitutious and moral principles. Pascal, in his Lettres Proviucialee,' had assailed them with ridicule, which has always proved most powerful in France. The parliament of Paris felt an old and hereditary hostility towards them : the minister Choiseul disliked them on personal and political grounds; he had felt and ascertained that their secret influence could often thwart and balance the credit of any minister; besides which, Choiseul was partial in a certain degree to some of the freethinking philosopher' of his time, who had no sympathy for the society. To crown all, even the king's mistress, Madame de Pompadour, arrayed herself against the Jesuits. A pretence soon occurred for effecting their expulsion. Father Lavalette, who was at the heed of this mis sions in the French Weat Indies, had been speculating in colonial produce. His cargoes were seized by the English, then at war with France. Father Lavalette became a bankrupt for 3,000,000 livres. His creditors in France appealed to the parliament of Paris, which, having seen in the constitutions of the society that no individual belonging to it could possess property on his own account, considered Father Lavolette's debt as that of the whole body, and condemned the society to pay the creditors. An immense outcry was raised against the Jesuits, and the parliament in 1762 declared that an inde pendent body like the society, having peculiar laws, and being all subject to ono individual residing at Rome, was an institution danger ous and unfit for any well-regulated state ; the other parliaments made similar declarations; and at last, in 1764, by an order of the king, the society was entirely suppressed in France, and their property was con fiscated; but a small pension was given to the members, who were allowed to remain dispensed in the country, on condition of swearing to renounce the society and Ile institutions.
The fall in Spain took place three year. later. Choiseul is said to have contributed to it by persuading Charles Ili. that an insurrection which broke out at Madrid In 1766 against the minister of the day was the work of the Jesuits. D'Arands, the president of the council of Castile, already prepossessed against the society, was the confidant of King Charles in effecting their expulsion. The society was feared, perhaps more than there was need, and everything was planned against them with the greatest secrecy. The king with his own hand wrote letters to all the governors of provinces throughout the Spanish monarchy in Europe and in the colonies, which were not to be opened until a specified day cud in a specified place. Wheu the appointed time came, the Slat of March 1767, the colleges and houses of the Jesuits throughout Spain were surrounded at midnight by troops, sentinels were posted at every door, the bells were secured, and king's commissioners having roused and assembled the respective communities in the refectory, read to them aloud the royal decree which expelled them from Spain. The members, having taken their
breviaries, some linen, and a few other conveniences, were placed in carriages and escorted by cavalry to the coast, where they embarked for Italy. After being refused admittance in several harbours, and kept for some months on board crowded ships, during which many of the aged and infirm died, the survivors were at last landed in Corsica.
Similar measures were executed in Spanish America, only with circumstances of still greater harshness. In Paraguay the Indians were amazed and distracted at the news, and would have opposed by force the execution of the decree, but the fathers exerted all their unbounded influence to appease the enraged Indians, and to induce them to submit quietly to the royal decree. No more than 9000 dollars, about 2000/. sterling, were found in their coffers. By a com promise between the pope and the king of Spain, the latter allowed a pension of a shilling a day to the expelled fathers; hut on condition that no apology of any sort should be written by any member of the order, under pain of all toeing their pensions.
In the following year (1768) the King of the Two Sicilies and the Duke of Parma suppressed the Jesuits' Society in their dominions. It still continued in the Sardinian and the Papal states ; but in Feb ruary 1769 their supporter Clement XIII. died, and Gaoganelli was elected iu his stead. France, Spain, Portugal, Naples, all insisted, in very strong terms, on the final suppression of the society by the new pope. Ganganelli proceeded with caution ; he took three years to con sider the matter. He appointed a congregation of five cardinals to examine the charges brought against the society. At last, on the 21st of July 1773, the pope issued a bull, in which, after descanting on the laudable object of the founders of the society, and on the services it had rendered to religion, he observed that on many occasions a spirit of discord had brukeu out between them and the other eccle siastical authorities, that many serious charges had been brought forward against individual members, who seem to have deviated from the original spirit of their institutions ; that, lastly, most Roman Catholic princes had found it necessary for the peace of their domi nions to expel the Jesuits therefrom, and that now, for the peace of the Christian world, and being moved by the most weighty considera tions, and considering that the Society of Jesus could no longer bring forth those fruits of piety and edification for which it was intended, ha declared the said society to be suppressed and extinct, its statutes annulled, and its members who had been ordained priests to be con sidered as secular priests, and the rest to be entirely released from their vows. He allowed those professed members who were old and infirm to remain in the houses of the extinct society, but merely as guests, without interfering in their future management, which was entrusted to commissioners.