“That good Franciscan of the Vatican leaves me my dear Jesuits, who are persecuted everywhere else. _I will preserve the precious seed, so as to be able one day to apply it to such as may desire again to cultivate this rare plant._” At last, notwithstanding his entreaties and prayers, they wrung the brief from the heart of the tottering old man. They gained their point while he lost his peace of mind, and was ever after murmuring, _Compulsus feci, compulsus feci_. We should be more correct in saying that they only half‐ gained it; for they were wild with rage at its being only a brief. What they wanted was a bull: destruction, not suspension. And such is the history of the famous suppression of the Jesuits. To make the story complete, we may as well add that, as soon as the brief became known, Switzerland, knowing that it was the production of the Bourbon faction and not of the Pope, refused to submit to it and deprive the Jesuits of their colleges. Catherine of Russia interceded in their favor, and gave the poor Pope a crumb of comfort in the few days that were left him. Well did he say, “This suppression will be the death of me.” While Frederick the Great—but he shall speak for himself, and we commend his utterance to Prince Bismarck. He writes to his agent at Rome: “Abbé Columbini, you will inform all who desire to know the fact, but without ostentation and affectation, and you will moreover seek an opportunity of signifying soon to the Pope and his chief minister, that, with regard to the Jesuits, _I am determined to retain them in my states_. In the treaty of Breslau, I guaranteed the _status quo_ of the Catholic religion, and I have never found better priests in every respect. You will further add that, as I belong to the class of heretics, the Pope cannot relieve me from the obligation of keeping my word, nor from the duty of a king and an honest man.” These words would be weakened by comment. We pass with relief from this worn‐out subject, and wish our adversaries joy of their mare’s nest. Men who have won the praise of their bitterest foes need small defence from their friends. We leave them in the hands of such men as Voltaire, Lord Macaulay, Sir James Stephens, Bancroft, Prescott, Parkman, and a host of other eminent men of all nations and all creeds save our own. When those who carp at the Jesuits have studied and refuted these writers to their own satisfaction, they may be in a fair way to meet us. Now we are met with the further objection: if the Jesuits are such an excellent body as we make them; as Protestant historians and infidel writers make them; as Catherine of Russia, as Frederick the Great, the founder of the Prussian empire, and in this respect the proto‐Bismarck, make them—why should Prince Bismarck pick such a deadly quarrel with them?