At the time of its abolition the Society numbered 22,589 members (of whom 11,293 were priests), and owned 669 colleges and 869 other residences (of which only 24 were "houses of the professed"). It is needless to add any reflections on the suppression. The papal brief is the supreme judgment on the Jesuits in the first phase of their existence. However many devoted and austere members there were among the twenty thousand, the Society was incurably corrupt. There was no serious ground to think, after earlier experience, that reform would succeed; they would not reform themselves--the decrees of their Congregations were waste paper--and they resisted every papal effort to reform them. The Society, as a body, was committed to the pursuit of wealth and power, and in this pursuit it acted invariably as if the end justified the means. The germs planted in it by Ignatius had ripened. His followers had sought the wealthy and the powerful, had veiled their actions in secrecy, and had trampled on their own rules and the rules of the Church when the end required it. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 38: See a full account in Döllinger and Reusch's _Geschichte der Moralstreitigkeiten in der Römisch-Katholischen Kirche_ (1889), i. 120-273.] [Footnote 39: Two works will give the reader ample material for forming an idea on the subject. From the Jesuit side there is Crétineau-Joly's work, _Clément XIV. et les Jésuites_ (1847), though the work is little more than a reproduction of the fifth volume of the same writer's _Histoire ... de la Compagnie de Jésus_, and is quite unprincipled in many of its statements. The other work (_Histoire du pontificat de Clément XIV._, 1852) is a reply to the preceding, written by the learned and conscientious Prefect of the Vatican Secret Archives, Father Theiner. Both contain copious extracts from contemporary documents, especially the correspondence of the ambassadors. The work of St. Priest, _Histoire de la chute des Jesuites_, is interesting and lively, but gossipy and unreliable.] [Footnote 40: The retreat is a period, generally a fortnight, in which priests and nuns devote themselves entirely to prayer and contemplation. It is usual to do so annually; to go into retreat twice in six weeks would be regarded as extraordinary and, in the circumstances, very significant.] CHAPTER XIV THE RESTORATION