The assassination of the king of Portugal, which happened the year following, and in which the society was again involved, served as a new means to its enemies for maintaining, and making it believed, that the attempt, which shocked all France, was their work. The friends of the Jesuits pretended that they were innocent of the crime committed in Portugal; that the storm raised against them on this occasion, and of which also they became the victims in that kingdom, was an effect of the hatred which they had drawn upon them, on the part of the prime minister Carvalho, who was all-powerful with that prince. But why should persons of a religious order inspire a minister of state with hatred against them, unless it be because they have rendered themselves formidable to that minister by their intrigues? Why should Mr. Carvalho, who detested the Jesuits, leave in peace the Cordeliers, the Jacobins, and the Recollects, unless because he found the Jesuits in his way, and that the others vegetated in peace in their convents, without doing the state either good or harm? Every religious and turbulent society merits, on that account alone, that a state should be purged of them; it is a crime for them to be formidable. Accordingly the Portugueze minister availed himself dexterously of the imputation laid to the charge of some of these fathers, of having advised, directed, and absolved the assassins, for causing all the Jesuits to be driven out of the kingdom: they were sent to their general, who, it is said, not knowing what to do with these new-comers, left them to perish with hunger and want on board the very vessels which brought them.