If the culture of the sciences and of letters has contributed to render the society commendable, and intrigue to make it powerful, another circumstance has not a little served to render it formidable to its enemies: and that is the union of all its members for the good of the common cause. In other societies, the interests and reciprocal hatred of individuals almost always hurt the good of the corps; but among the Jesuits it is quite otherwise. Not that in this society the individuals love each other better than elsewhere; perhaps they even hate one another more, being by their very constitutions spies and informers, from their birth, upon each other: yet attack a single person among them, you are sure of having the whole society for your enemy. Thus heretofore the Senate and Roman people, often divided among themselves by intestin dissensions, united at the bare name of the Carthaginians or of Mithridates. There is not a Jesuit who may not say, like the wicked spirit in scripture, “My name is Legion.” Never did republican love his country as every Jesuit loves his society: the very lowest of its members interests himself in its glory, of which he thinks some rays reflect upon himself: there is not (if I may presume to say so) even to their brother the apothecary, or the cook, one among them who is not proud and jealous of it. They are all at once put in action by this single spring, which one man directs at his pleasure; and it is not without reason that they have been defined “a naked sword, the hilt of which is at Rome.” The love which they have for their society, subsists even in almost all those who have left it: whether it be a real attachment founded upon gratitude, or a policy founded on interest or on fear, there is hardly an ex-Jesuit who preserves not his connexions with his old brethren; and who, even tho’ he has reason to complain of them, does not shew himself attached to their interests, and ready to defend them against their enemies. For the rest, this attachment of the Jesuits to their society, can be nothing but the effect of that pride which it inspires them with, and not at all of the advantages which it procures for each of its members. Independently of the little confidence and real friendship which they have one for the other, and the severe life which they lead within their houses, individuals, whatever merit they may have, are not at all considered in the corps, but in proportion to the talent which they have for intrigue: modest merit, or such as is confined to the labour of the closet, is there unknown, little considered, sometimes persecuted, if unfortunately the pressing interest of the society demand it. We have seen in these late times the fathers Brumoi and Bougeant, the last of the Jesuits who had any true and solid merit, die of chagrin under the weight of the persecutions which their fraternity were obliged to make them suffer: these two men, who were greater philosophers, and more enlightened, than their