abuses, and the most alarming of all abuses ?And should therefore those institutions be suppressed? True indeed, like every thing human, the monastic institutions have undergone great and deplorable alterations; but these changes sprung, almost always, not from an intrinsic source, but from the mischievous influence of a lay spirit, and principally from the usurpations of civil power. One fact is incontestable, which is, that there have been no human institutions, which offered themselves so easily to the most vigourous and efficacious reforms.

Behold then the services which they have rendered society according to the testimony of history honestly consulted. They have confered upon it a benefit, in my opinion, still greater, in giving to it a wholesome activity, a refuge unfailing and secure for whatever could not be relieved or effected by ordinary life. But what I admire beyond all, is the conception and practice of the secret of tranquillizing the maladies of the heart, correcting so many disorderly imaginations, of disciplining and fertilizing so many dangerous ambitions, in the bosom of what is termed so appropriately-the peace of the cloister!

Does any man believe that all this would be so bad, so dangerous in the bosom of a society like ours, when every thing conspires to excite the ambition, the imagination, and the disordered mind, when nothing suffices to calm or to regulate them, when material wellbeing, selfish and present enjoyment are the sole end and object of all the appetites, where those religious vocations which you desire to proscribe, are substituted by so few advantages,-by the 3000 suicides which you compute every year in your statistics of criminal justice (2586 in 1838, 2747 in 1839, 2814 in 1841.)

Now, if there be a character, which with but few exceptions, is common to all the religious orders, it is assuredly that of the vocation of teaching; they have been engaged in the work of education, not in France alone, but everywhere, not at the present day, but always; they have been the preceptors of all Christian Europe; from the first down to the thirteenth century they were exclusively the instructors in public and private education. When, at a later period, the universities began to flourish, the religious orders continued as collateral instructors, and that was the era too of their greatest splendour in France; they continued to pursue this course, down to the reformation and to the French revolution. The interdict prohibiting the religious orders to teach,— they who were the founders of education amongst us,-is a fact altogether moral and unique. During eight centuries, they, and they only, have preserved to the world, public Instruction as a sacred deposit: during six other centries, they practised it as a beneficent and incontestable right, and now it is desired that they alone be excluded from it! Such is the justice and the gratitude of

our age.

But whence the desire of this exclusion? It arises, not perhaps so much from a hatred of religious orders in general (for men are content to forget their services and pervert history to calumniate them;) but rather through fear and

hatred of the Jesuits, that is, of an order which in modern times, has won the highest honours, in the departments of Education. I say in modern times; because the Benedictins laboured more and during a much longer period in the cultivation of the human mind. But if the Benedictins and other religious have, at several times, been massacred, by the barbarians who met them and their colleagues, in their career, it is a thing unknown that the most barbarous nations entertained a thought of prohibiting them from Education. This refinement of despotism reserved for modern philosophy, was to be directed only against the Jesuits. This special distinction and honour belongs to them and it does delight me to see them recover their position. M. Cousin has told us that, it excites the smile or the contempt of any one acquainted with such matters, to hear persons descant on the talents of the Jesuits for Education.

Chancellor Bacon who had no knowledge perhaps in such matters, but to whom M. Cousin would not refuse to concede some competency in philosophy, has said: "As regards the art of educating youth, it would suffice to aay: Examine the schools of the Jesuits; for we do not see any thing better than these institutions. Consule scholas jusuitarum: nihil enim quod in usum venit, his melius. De Aug, Scien. i. vi. c. 4."

Descartes also, whose competency M. Cousin would not deny, and who was a pupil of the Jesuits, has rendered to them a similar testimony. In his 90th letter, he states: "Since philosophy is the key of the other sciences, it is of the highest utility to comprehend the study of the entire course as taught in the schools of the Jesuits. It is a tribute of honour which I owe to my former professors to say that I do not know a place in the world where it is better taught than at La Fleche, (a Jesuit college.)

And Voltaire, who amongst the pupils of the Jesuits, is certainly not the one who reflects the greatest honor on them; [A laugh] but who undoubtedly possessed a thorough skill in affairs of taste and knowledge, has said: "Nothing shall ever efface from my heart the memory of Father Porce, who is equally dear to all those who have studied under him. Never was there a man who rendered study and virtue more amiable. The hours of his lessons were to me most delightful hours; I had wished, that at Paris, as at Athens, it had been so arranged that persons of every age could have assisted at such lectures. Often I would have returned to hear them." Such, gentlemen, are the teachers which you ask to proscribe!

Chateaubriand, whom we may well quote after Bacon and Descartes, says: "Learned Europe has suffered an irreparable loss in the Jesuits. Education has not retrieved their fall." And at the very epoch he was recording this fact, under the Empire, Napoleon, thus expressed himself: "It is my opinion, that the Jesuits have left behind them, a vast vacuum, in the affairs of education."

Thus Bacon, Descartes, Voltaire, Chateaubriand and Napoleon are all agreed! Gentlemen, these great authorities are worth perhaps as much as that of M.

Cousin. [A laugh.] If one be mistaken in having the same opinion as these illustrious men upon the merits of the Jesuits, at least it must be admitted that he errs in good company.

But, we are told that all these eulogiums apply only to the first century of the Jesuits, a century of heroism, of sanctity, of glory, &c. M. Cousin has said so, when tracing the other day, a magnificent map of that century. In the first place, that restriction is entirely inaccurate, because Voltaire and Napoleon do not speak of the first but of the last century of the Institute. Again, if the first century was so irreproachable, how did it happen that it was precisely then, fifteen years after St. Ignatius, or at the time of St. Francis Xavier that the University of Paris, whose successors you affect to be, shut its doors against them, and prosecuted them before Parliament? How was it that precisely then, during all that first century, so admirable and so fruitful according to you, the Pasquiers and the Dumoulins and other legislators heaped accusations upon them? They were better defended but not more attacked then, than since; and if they were irreproachable then, there is every reason to conclude that modern invectives against them, rest upon no better foundation.

So then the University of that day, I perceive, entertained in common with the modern University, an animosity concurring in all respects; they banished the Jesuits precisely on account of their merit, as they had done, three centuries before with St. Thomas of Aquin whom M. Cousin would call a man eminent "for his time," and as since they banished Descartes, who has now so many partisians and of whom so much has been said, in this house, for several days past, and who, was treated by contemporaneous adversaries; as a Jesuit de robe court,—a circumstance which may serve to console those who being more modern and altogether less illustrious, possess nothing in common with him except to be thus qualified.

I do not appear in this place to refute all those unjust accusations of which the Jesuits have been the object. However there are two which by their having, recently, been introduced into this discussion, have acquired thereby a degree of authority which it is important to remove.

The first is one, I avow it, which has struck me with astonishment to hear, coming from M. Cousin: he stated in your presence the other day, not in the warmth of a hasty extemporaneous address, but in a written discourse, that the constitutions of the Jesuits prescribe, that in the course of studying philosophy, that all questions regarding God are to be passed over: Praetereantur questiones de Deo! Now, Gentlemen, are you unacquainted with the originals of these same constitutions cited by M. Cousin? I hold them in my hand. I take a copy of which there exists no suspicion, for it is the same which was employed by the parliament of Paris in preparing its decree of 1742. And what is the fact? Not that they shall pass over all questions regarding God; the constitutions say explicitly that in Metaphysics, those questions shall be passed which treat of God and of Spirits, and which depend altogether, or in

part, upon revelation.* That is to say, that they shall follow the rule laid down, applauded and defended by M. Cousin himself before you, in the course of this debate! that they shall not teach a metaphysics contrary to revelation, but apart from it, independent of it, and bringing to the support of revealed truth the demonstrations which we arrive at, from reason alone!

Freely indeed, do I absolve M. Cousin from the suspicion even of a desire to falsify the original text, in order to combat his opponents; but I will reproach him, in his presence-though he be not only a very eloquent philosopher but a most able philologist, I shall reproach him for having borrowed, without verification, a citation from a calumnious pamphlet, wherein almost all the passages cited are falsified, like that you have just seen. And since we are treading on the ground of Escobar it will be admitted that here at least the Escobardianism is by no means on the side of the Jesuits.

But, Gentlemen, behold another proof of the extreme negligence with which persons of the greatest gravity repeat accusations without the least foundation, when they treat of the Jesuits. M. Passy, that veteran minister, a man always so grave, and so moderate, has just told you, that in a History of France, arranged by the Jesuits, the emperor Napoleon was styled the Marquis of Buonaparte, Lieut. General of the armies of Lewis XVIII.

Now, gentlemen, I have the honor to announce to you that such is not the case, that such is not at all the fact, that this stupid falsification of history never existed; had it been a fact it would have proved very little in favor of the alleged dexterity and craft with which they reproach the Jesuits, but the whole matter turns out to be a mere forgery. The history mentioned has been stereotpyed; more than 100,000 copies have probably been printed; it has been circulated, and still circulates, in every direction. The author who is still living, declares upon the word of a priest and a man of honor that he has never written a sentence of what has been imputed to him. Here are the two first editions of the work dated 1810, and 1816. They contain, I admit, many opinions against the fame of the Emperor, and which are contrary to impartial history, but such opinions was the fashion of that day. Recriminations, if we desired to deal in them, would affect a much higher quarter than that of an obscure Jesuit; they would reach men whom we all respect, men who like others were swayed by a political reaction. But these works contain not a line, or trace of the absurd falsifications. We read here literally: "Napoleon Bonaparte, proclaimed emperor, under the name Napoleon, afterwards crowned by Pius VII;" and the details hereof are subsequently given in the work.

None in this house, surely, has ever seen a copy of the History of France, which contained the absured transformation of Napoleon into a Marquis. And if a copy could be found any where which contained it, I would say confiden

• In metaphysica questiones de Deo et intelligentiis, quo omnino aut magnopere pendent ex veritatibus divina fide traditis, prætereantur. Instit. Soc. Jes., II, p. 194. de Prage, 1757.

tially that some enemy of the Jesuits had inserted it therein,-and that the interpolation could not astonish any who beheld, with his own eyes, as I did, lithographs, in 1830 representing the Jesuits, going through the military exercises, in the parks of Montrouge, for the purpose of teaching the art of war to the people of Paris. [Laughing and much emotion.] Yes, Gentlemen, I have seen it, and it is in this way, history is composed not amongst the Jesuits but against the Jesuits. Those who fabricated, and issued for sale, such inventions, are quite capable, it is presumed, of forging that history of the marquis Bonaparte, to disgrace the victims of their animosity with more effect.

But you hear continually the question, where originates all this attachment to the Jesuits? Is not religion they say, to be more esteemed and valued than the Jesuits, and cannot the former be esteemed without the latter?

Ah! Gentlement, shall we then tell you what it is that attaches us so strongly to the Jesuits? Well, it is precisely the atrocity and reckless character of the attacks aimed at them,--the calumnies with which they area ssailed. What heart possessing one generous, one refined feeling beholding men who are his brethren, the priests of his faith, overwhelmed incessantly with wrong, treated most perfidously, does not experience an irrepressible desire to defend them? It is thus we are attracted, this is our impulse, but it is a passion of hatred which actuates the enemies of the church. I do not mean to affirm that the opponents of the Jesuits are all enemies of the Church; yet I say decidedly that the enemies of the Church are ever the most virulent adversaries of the Jesuits. Their first blows are always aimed at them, and it is this that has earned for the Jesuits the esteem and confidence of Catholics, who regard them therefore as their advance guard, the select batallion of the church. One of the more honest amongst our opponents has made a frank avowal of this; "Jesuitism, it has been said, is nothing more in this country than an antiquated formula which merits, at least, the honor of assuming to itself, all that popular hatred of whatever is odious and retrograde in the tendencies of a degenerate religion. Maugre the distinctions which have been made, between the French clergy and the fathers of the faith, every one understands the drift of this contest, which in reality resolves itself into the question whether it is exclusive Catholicism, or liberty shall be victorious."

This conviction acknowledged by the enemies of the clergy, is gradually disclosing itself amongst ourselves who are the children as well as the defenders of the clergy. This it is, and perhaps I should not conceal the fact, which has made a convert of myself. For I too have been converted to the Jesuits. When I was a pupil of the University, under the Restoration; when I pursued the course of Messrs. Villemain and Cousin, of the Sorbonne, I also vituperated the Jesuits, and, surrounded by unbelieving associates, I concealed

Liberty is used by this writer to mean, not the civil right, or liberty of conscience, which is guaranteed by the Charter, but a freedom, or independence of God and all religion! Licentiousness is the terin he should have used.-TR.