The Jesuits now, as always, small as their number is, were the leading Catholic teachers in Germany among high and low. Their access to the chairs of the universities made them to a great extent the moulders of thought, the teachers of the teachers, the great intellectual bulwark against the spread of rationalism and every form of false doctrine which strives to creep in to the hearth of the commonwealth and endanger its existence. As they were the strenuous upholders of Bismarck in all that was right; as their influence against the maxims of the International, though not so immediate and showy as his, was infinitely deeper and more lasting, so when he would intrench upon rights that are inalienable to every man of whatever complexion and creed, they turned and boldly faced the Chancellor himself. Were the character which their opponents would fix upon them true, they had their opportunity of showing it—of going with him at least at the outset. He would not have disdained the assistance of such able lieutenants. But instead, the wily Jesuits, the men of the world, the plotters, the schemers, the Order that is untrue to everything and everybody save itself, throws itself with undiminished ardor, with a devotion worthy of the fatalist, with all their heart and soul, into a losing cause; into a cause which they have ever supported; which has been losing these eighteen hundred and seventy‐two years, but which has never lost. These considerations bring us to the root of the question. This marvellous German empire, this more than a nine days’ wonder, has been convulsed into life; and sudden convulsions are liable to as sudden relapses. Bismarck’s heart is in it; he is the corner‐stone; it is built upon him; and he of all men knows on what a rocking foundation it is built. Listen to his mouthpiece once more, Minister Delbrück, in his speech on the third reading of the bill against the Jesuits: “We live under a very new system of government, called into existence by mighty political convulsions: and I hold that we should commit a great error in abandoning ourselves to the delusion that everything is accomplished and perfected because the Imperial German constitution has been published in the official organ of the empire. For a long time to come we shall have to keep carefully in mind that the constitution—the new creation—has enemies not only abroad but at home; and if the representatives of the empire arrive at the conviction that among these internal enemies an organ is to be reckoned which, while furnished with great intellectual and material means, and endowed with a rare organization, steadily pursues a fixed inimical aim, it has a perfect right to meet and frustrate the anticipated attack.”