When the protracted controversy between Spain and Portugal, about the boundaries of their respective possessions in South America, reached an adjustment, it furnished an occasion for testing the obedience of the Jesuits to royal authority. The two Governments, after the usual delay in such matters, came to an amicable understanding, and arranged the boundaries to their mutual satisfaction. It placed a portion of the Jesuit missions under the jurisdiction of the Portuguese, which they had supposed to belong to Spain. The Jesuits refused to submit to this, and inaugurated the necessary measures to resist it, being determined, if they could prevent it, not to submit to the dominion of Portugal. Their preference for Spain was because of the fact that the king of that country was more favorably inclined to them than the Portuguese king. But the history of the controversy justifies the belief that they would not even have submitted to the former unresistingly, inasmuch as it had undoubtedly become their fixed purpose to retain the independence they had long labored to establish, by maintaining their theocratic form of government. They had been so accustomed to autocratic rule over the natives, that they could not become reconciled to the idea of surrendering it to any earthly power. In this instance, however, they encountered an adversary of whose courage and capacity they had not the least conception, and whom they found, in a brief period, capable of inflicting a death-blow upon the society. This was Sebastian Cavalho, Marquis of Pombal, who was the chief counselor of the Portuguese king.