The French Revolution had made the attempt, in imitation of the example of the United States, to scatter the germs of popular representative government throughout Europe. Whatsoever errors sprang out of that great movement are attributable more to the pre-existing influences and prejudices of false education, and to the aid which monarchism derived from the ill-fated union of Church and State, than to all other causes combined. When the European States became convulsed by this event, the Jesuits seized upon the opportunity to persuade the reigning sovereigns that the support of their society as organized by Loyola, was absolutely necessary to the preservation and continuance of the principle of monarchy; and that without their co-operation the people, who were incapable of conducting the affairs of government, would triumph over kings. They assailed liberalism in every form, from the French Encyclopædists to the humblest advocate of popular government, consigning all of them to eternal tortures for venturing to assert the natural right of mankind to civil and religious liberty. This was congenial work to them; for, although not yet re-established, they felt assured that if they could excite the fears of the sovereigns at the probable loss of their royal authority, they would thereby set in operation a current of influences which would soon reach Pius VII, and lead him to disregard the decree of their abolition, and to cast his lot along with the other kings, whatsoever effect might be produced upon the fortunes of the Church. Loyola had founded the order upon the plea of its necessity to counteract the influences of the Reformation in the sixteenth century; and now in the nineteenth, the same argument was repeated, so varied only as to embrace all the existing fruits of the Reformation, including the right of the people to self-government. The Jesuits did not miscalculate. They knew how to excite both the fears and bigotry of the sovereigns. They understood Pius VII, and succeeded at last in obtaining from him the decree for their re-establishment, by virtue of which they have since existed, and are now scattered throughout all the nations, with neither their ambition nor thirst for power in the least degree slackened.