It is absurd to regard this formidable indictment of a religious body as a mere list of charges into the justice of which the Pope will not inquire. It is a list of the charges proved to the satisfaction of his predecessors, and embodied in the decrees of the Popes whom he names; and the sternest critic of the Society could hardly frame a weightier indictment in a few lines. The Pope adds that the measures of his predecessors for the reform of the Society were fruitless, and under Clement XIII. "the storms became worse than ever." The Catholic monarchs, he says, have been compelled by "seditions" and "scandals" to expel the Jesuits from their dominions and demand the abolition of the Society. To this demand he has given conscientious attention, and, "recognising that the Society of Jesus can no longer produce the abundant fruits and the considerable advantages for which it was created," he "suppresses and abolishes the Society for ever." The brief closes with directions for the disposal of Jesuit property, and a singularly lengthy and subtle development of his sentence to prevent the casuistic genius of the Jesuits from evading it. The brief is, therefore, much more than a declaration that the Jesuits must be sacrificed in the interest of peace, and the hatred with which they have pursued the memory of its author has solid ground. It is a plain and learned demonstration that the step taken by Clement XIV. is the just culmination of the history of the Society; it says nothing of leaving open the question of the truth of the charges against the Jesuits, and the deliberate addition of the solemn words "for ever" to the sentence of dissolution shows clearly that it contemplates no temporary situation. The only serious objection urged by the Jesuits and their friends is that they were not summoned to answer the charges against them. Clement might have replied that the charges had been examined, and their defence heard, a dozen times in the history of the papacy; but his chief reason for rejecting this futile idea of a trial was probably that he knew well how the Jesuits intrigued on such occasions. Like Sixtus V. he would certainly have passed away, leaving the Church in the throes of the struggle, before a verdict was given.