the protection Russia had extended to them after the abolition of the society by the pope, and charging them with the egregious crime of sowing tares and animosities among families, and tearing the son from the father, and the daughter from the mother, Alexander asks this emphatic and significant question: "Where, in fact, is the State that would tolerate in its bosom those who sow in it hatred and discord?"[151] This was the first attempt made by any State not Roman Catholic to expel the Jesuits, and it is not pretended, even by the Jesuits themselves, that it was on account of their religion, which the Russian Government allowed them to exercise freely. It must have been, therefore, the consequence of their having convinced the Russian authorities that they employed their religion as a pretext for their interference with temporal and political affairs; and that they had thereby made themselves rightfully amenable to the charges alleged against them in the ukase of the emperor. It is no defense against these charges to say that the emperor may have been mistaken. This is not probable; for the fact of their having plotted against the peace and interests of society in return for the favors he bestowed upon them, would have justified him in condemning them even more severely. There are very few offenses so base as ingratitude, which excludes the higher emotions from the mind. He gave them shelter and protection after the pope and the Roman Catholic powers had condemned and abolished them; and but for this they would have passed away forever, overwhelmed by the popular indignation. The very fact that he found himself constrained to arraign them as he did, with such crushing severity, is convincing proof of their ingratitude, as well as of their inability to exist anywhere, in fidelity to their constitution, without warring upon the peace of society and upon everything they are unable to subdue and control.