Reports, founded or unfounded, were circulated in the country, and countenanced by these powerful men, that the Jesuits had instigated the riots of Madrid. It was confidently asserted, that many had been seen in the mob, though disguised; and Father Isidro Lopez, an Asturian, who was considered as one of the leading characters in the company, was expressly named as having been active in the streets. Ensenada, the great protector of the Jesuits in the former reign, had been named by the populace as the proper successor of Squilace, and there were certainly either grounds for suspecting, or pretexts for attributing the discontent of the metropolis to the machinations of the Jesuits and their protector the ex-minister Ensenada. Enquiries were instituted. Many witnesses were examined; but great secrecy was preserved. It is, however, to be presumed, that, under colour of investigating the causes of the late riot, Aranda and Roda contrived to collect every information which could inflame the mind of the King against those institutions which they were determined to subvert. They had revived the controversy respecting the conduct of the venerable Palafox, and drawn the attention both of Charles III. and the public to the celebrated letter of that prelate, in which he describes the machinations of the Jesuits in South America, and which their party had but a few years since sentenced to be publicly burnt in the great square of Madrid. But, even with the assistance of Father Osma, the acquiescence of the King, and the concert of many foreign enemies of the Company, Roda and Aranda were in want of the additional aid which talents, assiduity, learning, and character could supply, to carry into execution a project vast in its conception, and extremely complicated, as well as delicate in its details. They found it in the famous Campomanes. Perhaps the grateful recollection of services, and the natural good-nature of Jovellanos, led him to praise too highly his early protector and precursor, in the studies which he himself brought to greater perfection. But Campomanes was an enlightened man, and a laborious as well as honest minister. He was at that time Fiscal of the Council and Chancellor of Castile, and considered by the profession of the law, as well as by the great commercial and political bodies throughout Spain, as an infallible oracle on all matters regarding the internal administration of the kingdom. _The Coleccion de Providencias tomadas por el gobierno sobre el estrañamiento y ocupacion de temporalidades de los Regulares de la Compañia_ (Collection of measures taken by the Government for the alienation and seizure of the temporalities of the Regulars of the company of Jesuits) is said to be a monument of his diligence, sagacity, and vigour.