When we reflect that the Jesuits are our fellow-men, that their crimes and iniquities which we are compelled to stigmatise, are in some measure a stain upon the human species, we sincerely rejoice when we find some noble action to record, and when we may write a page of praise and eulogium. We think we have shewn this impartiality in our account of the Indian missions, when, while condemning with all our might the idolatrous practice of later times, we awarded to the first missionaries the praise that was due to their pure and generous intentions, and to their prodigious and unremitting activity. We are placed in much the same predicament in speaking of the American missions, when we find the evil inherent in the spirit of the sect, and in the religion they profess, united with noble and generous endeavours to make the happiness of a barbarous and savage population, by reducing it under benignant and humane laws, and by imparting to it the benefit of Christianity, at least in its effects upon the external conduct and mode of living. No doubt, a Christian Protestant—a man deeply imbued with the true spirit of the gospel, and who abhors any form of worship which consists in mere bodily service—will find much to blame in these missions. No doubt the Jesuits here, as in India, preached and taught superstitious practices and external observances, rather than the sincere devotion of the heart, and the faith to be reposed on the merits of Christ’s blood. No doubt they converted the spiritual and mystic religion of Christ into a sensual worship of material symbols. But, to be just, we think that these reproaches are due to Popery, to the Roman Catholic religion in general, and not to the Jesuits alone, and that we ought not to withhold from them the praise they deserve for any good quality or merits they possess, merely because they are Papists. This would be too invidious, and would render us guilty of capital injustice towards those Romanists or Jesuits who sincerely believe that theirs is the only true religion; and be assured that in all religions, there are some who think thus of their own. On the other hand, the Jesuits are accused of having undertaken these missions solely with a view to their private ends, to aggrandise and enrich the order, and not to advance the interests of religion and the glory of God. This we freely admit, and we have repeatedly said that _the Order_ has always been the ultimate end of their conduct; but to refuse them the merit of having brought a savage population into the pale of civilisation, because they did so for their own private interest, would be the same as to apply the epithet of rogue to a landlord or manufacturer, who treats his dependants with unwonted kindness and humanity, because, by treating them in this manner, he himself receives immense advantage.