The root of the matter is wrong indubitably.  It is contrary to good government that a sacerdotal class, by means of confession and direction, should be placed in a position of deciding upon conduct.  It is revolting to human dignity that this same class, without national allegiance, and without domestic ties, should have the opportunity of infecting young minds by unhealthy questionings and dishonorable suggestions.  But this wrong, which is inherent in the modern Catholic system, becomes an atrocity when it is employed, as the Jesuits employed it, as an instrument for moulding and controlling society in their own interest.

While the Jesuits rendered themselves obnoxious to criticism by their treatment of the individual in his private and social capacity, they speedily became what Hallam cautiously styles ’rather dangerous supporters of the See of Rome’ in public and political affairs.  The ultimate failure of their diplomacy and intrigue over the whole field of modern statecraft inclines historians of the present epoch to underrate their mechanics of obstruction, and to underestimate the many occasions on which they did successfully retard the progress of civil government and intellectual freedom.  It were wiser to regard them in the same light as fanatics laying stones upon a railway, or of dynamiters blowing up an emperor or a corner of Westminster Hall.  The final end of the nefarious traffic may not be attained.  But credit can be claimed by those who took their part in it, for the wreck of express trains, the perturbation of cities, and the mourning of peaceable families.  And thus it was with the Jesuits.  Though the results of their political intrigues had not corresponded to their hopes, they yet worked appreciable mischief by the organization of the League in France, and the Thirty Years’ War in Germany, and by their revolutionary theories which infected Europe with conspiracy and murder.  Their method was not original.  Machiavelli had expounded the doctrines they put in practice.  He taught that in a desperate state of the nation, men may have recourse to treachery and violence.  The nation of the Jesuits was a hybrid between their order and Catholicism.  The peril to the Church was imminent; its decadence demanded desperate remedies.  They invoked regicide, revolt, and treason, to effect an impossible cure.

The political theory of the Jesuits was deduced from their fundamental principle of obedience to the Church.  They maintained that the ecclesiastical is jure divino superior to the secular power.  The Pope through God’s commission and appointment sways the Church; the Church takes rank above the State, as the soul above the body.  Consequently, the first allegiance of a Christian nation, together with its secular rulers, belongs of right to the Supreme Pontiff.  The people is the real sovereign; and kings are delegates from the people, with authority which they can only justly exercise so long as they