At the present day, that royal principle, with all its consequences, and they extend far, is widely diffused throughout the empire. Every man in it acknowledges the impossibility of converting the millions of his majesty's catholic subjects to any other assignable mode of faith; {324} and every thinking man must feel the importance and, at the present day, the necessity, of attaching these millions to the common cause of the empire, and to the cordial support of one common government. Sound policy will always forbear to sour and to fret subjects, by jealous suspicions and invidious distinctions. It will always incline wise rulers of states to provide, for their subjects, ministers of religion, who are firmly attached to their government, and who may feel that they have nothing to fear from it, while they do not provoke its sword. Such was the conduct of continental governments in past times; and they everywhere judged it prudent to intrust, in a great measure, the national education of their youth to the active order of Jesuits, who, at the same time, were preachers, and catechists, and confessors, and visitors of hospitals and prisons; and who always had in reserve a surplus of apostles, armed with a cross and a breviary, ready to fly to every point of the heavens, to the extremities of the globe, to create in the wilds of America and Asia new {325} empires for the God of the Gospel, new nations of subjects for France, Portugal, and Spain. The political services rendered by Jesuits to those crowns have often been acknowledged; yet, alas! how have they been requited? When the venerable missioners of the society of Jesuits were dragooned out of Portuguese and Spanish America, the loss of millions of Indians, whom they had civilized, nay, the loss of the territorial possession was loudly predicted to those misguided courts. The first part of the prediction has long since been fulfilled. All the power of France, Spain, and Portugal, could not replace the old tried missioners of Canada, California, Cinaloa, Mexico, Maragnon, Peru, Chili, and Paraguay. The Jesuits were destroyed; the civilized natives, deprived of their protectors, disbanded, and relapsed into barbarism.