Let us bear it in mind, before quitting this point, that the feeling of their countrymen as well as of the whole Catholic world is with them. We all know how a government, and particularly a strong government, can influence the public voice and manipulate votes. Well, petitions rolled in for the suppression of the Jesuits; but, strange to say, roll in as they might, a still vaster number came to retain them; and on the strength of the former, the measure was put before parliament and passed. This fact of the popular voice proclaiming itself boldly in favor of the Order is very significant when we take into account the forces arrayed against each other, though, in truth, the battle was all on the side of the government. On the one hand we have the Prince‐Chancellor working the engine of the state—his own creation—with every nerve that is in him, joining himself in the debates with speeches of the bitterest and most inflammatory character; on the other, we have a body of 708 men! Such was their number in Germany according to the statistics of last year; the total number throughout the world being 8,809. To this, then, the contest reduces itself apparently. These are the ostensible foes. The new and powerful German government, in the first flush of an unprecedented success, headed by the “terrible Chancellor,” pitted might and main against 708 individuals, staking its very life on the contest. What evenly matched foes! For the Jesuits are the sole object of this attack, mind. Listen to Minister Delbrück in his speech on the third reading of the bill: “It is my duty, in the name of the confederate government, to repudiate anew that view of the question which identifies the Society of Jesus with the Catholic Church.... In such an allegation they can discover nothing more than an arbitrary perversion of notorious facts: a falsification which is the more to be deplored, as it might serve to deprive the measure in circles outside of this assembly of its true character, and impress on it another which it does not possess.” This minister was the mouthpiece of Bismarck—“the hands indeed are Esau’s, but the voice is that of Jacob.” Was there ever such a picture of injured innocence and righteous indignation?