We have already described the characters of those good and able ministers who surrounded that monarch, and we have alluded to their Jansenistic doctrines, which were diametrically opposed to those professed by the Jesuits. But neither the upright principles nor enlarged ideas of the monarch, nor yet the influence exercised by Aranda, Campomanes, Floridablanca, and Roda, would have been sufficient to induce him to take a measure so violent, if there had not intervened a circumstance which necessarily appeared, in his eyes, an outrage on his dignity, a wound on his self-respect, and a threat against the legitimacy of his rights. The king was as much a Jansenist as his ministers. The Jesuits knew it, and resolved to make a secret war against him, which should terminate in his dethronement. Father Rizzio, General of the Jesuits established in Rome, gave orders to all the chiefs of the convents belonging to their institution to propagate, by means of their subalterns, as well by private conversations as through the confessional, the important secret that Charles III. was the illegitimate son of Ferdinand VI., and that, consequently, he ought to be considered as a usurper of the throne of his reputed father. The minister, Roda, intercepted a correspondence containing irrefragable proofs of that abominable intrigue; and this was sufficient to make the king resolve upon a course of action which he had refrained from for some time, at the instance of his ministers, through fear of offending the court of Rome and of bringing a scandal on the Christian world. The king had no power to suppress a religious order; but he could, as chief of the state, expel from his territory any persons whomsoever, and this was the part which he took with respect to the individuals of the Company of Jesuits. The execution of this grand design was a master-work of foresight and prudence. The civil authorities of all the towns having Jesuitical establishments, as well in Spain as in the colonies, received a sealed packet from the government. On opening the outer cover was found an order that the interior packet was not to be opened till a certain day and at a certain hour, and in the presence of the subaltern authorities, and a most severe injunction to keep even that operation secret till the moment of its execution. On the arrival of the day and hour appointed the packets were opened, as had been previously arranged, simultaneously; and then was found, in each, an order to take immediate possession of the houses of the Jesuits, to sequester their goods, and transmit, without delay of time, their persons to the nearest port, in which would be found vessels already waiting to receive them on board, and convey them into Italy. This was done, at the same instant, in all places for hundreds of leagues in extent, without the Jesuits, with all their cunning, having received a breath of information, or entertained a suspicion, as to the stroke impending over