It is to be presumed that the Jesuits professed submission to Russian authority before the decree of Pius VII which allowed them to exist in that country. But after the same pope re-established the order, as he soon did, by another special decree, their schemes of ambition were more actively and openly plotted. This last act, which restored them to active life, was dated August 7, 1814, and inasmuch as it enabled them to reproduce all their old machinery of mischief, it deserves to be well considered, both as regards the character of the act itself, and the motives of its author. It constitutes one of the important events in modern history, the influences of which have not yet ceased, and are not likely to cease so long as the contest between monarchism and popular institutions shall continue. Pius VII was a monarchist in principle, besides being a temporal sovereign. Monarchism was seriously threatened, and was ready to accept whatsoever alliance its defenders deemed essential to its preservation. Popular government was the special dread of kings, and there were none of these who did not understand that nowhere else in the world was it more severely condemned than in the Jesuit constitution, and none who would rejoice more at its extermination than the members of the Jesuit society. We should glance, therefore, at the condition of the European nations at the time of Pius VII, in order to penetrate his motives and comprehend what he must have regarded as the necessity which influenced him in aiding the Jesuits to cast reproach upon the memory of Clement XIV, one of the most meritorious of his predecessors.