In making religion the basis of education, no inference can be drawn, that the temporal interests and rights of mankind are to be neglected. Man, born to sorrow, having but a short time to live, is assuredly more concerned in securing an eternal than a temporal happiness; but he is sufficiently long in his transit to render his situation on earth of importance, and the ease and contentment of every individual should be the object of all governments: for this are communities formed, for this are laws made, for this does the sovereign execute the laws, and for this are individuals required to bear and to forbear. Evil must arise, and afflictions must be borne, but that government is the best imagined, and the most wisely administered, {255} by which the large mass of the people are enabled to pass through the years of probation with the greatest comfort, and are presented with opportunities of bettering their conditions and promoting their families. But I do not mean to interweave, here, an essay upon government and civil rights; the contemplation of the admirable system of education among the Jesuits led to these observations on the systems of general education, and in concluding them with expressly stating my opinion of the grand object of national community my view is, to leave no room for attributing the sentiments of loyalty and of religion, which, in such a work as this, have naturally fallen from my pen, to servility or bigotry. My subject is now come to its close: it is not to be denied, that the restoration of the order of Jesuits has excited alarm; for we already see a new conspiracy formed against it, possessing all the malignity, if not all the talent, or power, of the old one. But who are the persons alarmed? {256} They can be such only as have a similarity of spirit and of views to those of the former enemies of the society (sir John Hippisley nevertheless excepted, whose alarm must have a very different spring); men, who have already dared to warn the clergy of England against instituting schools, in which children are to be instructed in the national religion, because of the hostile feelings which will be excited between them and the children of the anti-church institutions[94]; jacobinical philosophers, materialists, votaries of reason and eternal sleep, and, perhaps, some clergy, as before, of their own communion, whose interest may be affected, and who have not penetration and virtue enough to see and enjoy the motive and the justice of their restoration to religion and to letters: "ignorance," said Henry IV, in his speech to Harlay before cited, "has always borne a grudge to learning." I trust, however, and believe, that I {257} have proved enough to convince the reader, that the Jesuits have been calumniated; that their destruction was effected by the malice and envy of their enemies, on the one hand, and by the pusillanimity of their proper protector on the other;