The people of Europe became greatly agitated at finding in their midst so formidable an enemy to the public peace and quiet as the Jesuits. This agitation was increased by the trial of the society for the debt of Lavalette before the Parliament of Paris, which resulted, as already stated, in bringing to the light the odious principles of the Jesuit constitution, the exposure of which is represented as having produced "alarm and consternation among all classes of society." In France the Jesuits made an effort to arrest the public indignation by procuring a decree from "fifty bishops," who, under the auspices of the nuncio of Clement XIII, certified that the principles of the constitution were harmless. But this adroit movement failed to produce the desired effect. The Parliament, under the lead of Choiseul, the prime minister of Louis XV, refused to permit an edict to that effect to be registered. Whereupon, the investigation into the constitution and statutes of the society was continued for some months, and resulted in the enactment of a Parliamentary decree which shows the odium then attached to the society in France. It denounced their doctrines and practices "_as perverse, destructive of every principle of religion, and even of probity; as injurious to Christian morality, pernicious to civil society, seditious, dangerous to the rights of the nation, the nature of the royal power, and the safety of the persons of sovereigns; as fit to excite the greatest troubles in States, to form and maintain the most profound corruption in the hearts of men_." It would be impossible to find language more expressive; and when it is considered that it was uttered by a Parliamentary body composed only of those who maintained the faith of the Church of Rome, it may readily be supposed that the most imminent necessity called it forth. And it will excite no surprise that the same decree proceeded to provide "that the institutions of the Jesuits should forever cease to exist throughout the whole extent of the kingdom," and that it also prohibited them from teaching in the schools, from longer recognizing the authority of their general, and from wearing a religious dress.[127]