First of all, granting, which we by no means intend to do, that all that they allege is true, that it was with the greatest difficulty they even crept into existence, and that a Pope found it necessary to suppress them; there stands out in the face of such opposition the telling fact of their existence in the broad light of these open days, when no sham can pass muster, when the keen, eminently honest eye of these folk pick out the false in a twinkling, expose it, hoot it down, away with it, and there is an end. Such a fact opposed to such never‐failing opposition is a very stubborn thing, and bears with it something very like reality and truth. As for the difficulty of their beginning, that is the history of all orders in the church, so careful is she of new‐fangled notions. In fact, if our recollection serves us, that, we believe, is the history of the church herself. So much for the alleged opposition of Sixtus V. And now for the quelcher: the suppression by Clement XIV. Here we give in: our opponents are right. Clement XIV. actually did issue a _brief_ suppressing the Jesuits. Of course it is perfectly unnecessary to inform these theological and mediæval scholars that a brief is a very different thing from a bull; that a brief is in no wise binding on the successor of the Pontiff who issues it; that a brief has no more to do with infallibility than these gentlemen themselves have. And now we would beg them to listen a moment to the very few Jesuitical words in which we explain this whole thing away. Clement XIV. issued this brief in exactly the same way that King John signed the Magna Charta; Charles I. the death‐warrant of Strafford; or George IV. the act for Catholic emancipation. We believe none of our readers would blame King Charles for the death of Strafford, or thank King John for Magna Charta, or George IV. for Catholic emancipation; as little do we, can we, or any one who has read the history of the time, blame Clement XIV. for the brief which suppressed the Jesuits. The timid old monk—he was consecrated Pope at what the Bourbons considered the very safe age of sixty‐four—was strong enough to resist this wicked demand of their suppression to the utmost. We must bear in mind that the demand was made by no body in the church; but only by the ambassadors of France, Spain, and Naples. “I know what you want,” he said, “you want to create a heresy and destroy the church.” Another time he writes, “I can neither censure nor abolish an institute which has been commended by nineteen of my predecessors.” In the meantime, we have a disinterested witness, happily enough from Prussia, a man whom we have no doubt even Prince Bismarck has some respect for. It is no less a person than Frederick the Great, who writes to _Voltaire_: