Pestilence, as well as war, appears to have menaced Mexico at this epoch. The small pox broke out in the capital and carried off ten thousand persons. Besides this, another malady, which is described by the writers of the period as similar to that which had ravaged the country a hundred and seven years before, and which terminated by an unceasing flow of blood from the nostrils, filled the hospitals of the capital with its victims. From Mexico this frightful and contagious malady passed to the interior, where immense numbers, unable to obtain medical advice, medicine, or attendance, were carried to the grave.

The general administration of the viceroyalty by the Marques de Cruillas was unsatisfactory both to the crown and the people of New Spain. The best historians of the period are not definite in their charges of misconduct against this nobleman, but his demeanor as an executive officer required the appointment of a visitador, in order to examine and remedy his abuse of power. The person charged with this important task,—Don José Galvez,—was endowed with unlimited authority entirely independent of the viceroy, and he executed his office with severity. He arrested high officers of the government, and deprived them of their employments. His extraordinary talents and remarkable industry enabled him to comprehend at once, and search into, all the tribunals and governmental posts of this vast kingdom. In Vera Cruz he removed the royal accountants from their offices. In Puebla, and in Mexico, he turned out the superintendents of customs, and throughout the country, all who were employed in public civil stations, feared, from day to day, that they would either be suspended or deposed. Whilst Galvez attended, thus, to the faithful discharge of duty by the officers of the crown, he labored, also, to increase the royal revenue. Until that period the cultivation of tobacco had been free, but Galvez determined to control it, as in Spain, and made its preparation and sale a monopoly for the government. Gladly as his other alterations and reforms were received by the people, this interference with one of their cherished luxuries was well nigh the cause of serious difficulties. In the city of Cordova, and in many neighboring places, some of the wealthiest and most influential colonists depended for their fortunes and income upon the unrestrained production and manufacture of this article. Thousands of the poorer classes were engaged in its preparation for market, while in all the cities, towns, and villages, there were multitudes who lived by selling it to the people. Every man, and perhaps every woman, in Mexico, used tobacco, and consequently this project of the visitador gave reasonable cause for dissatisfaction to the whole of New Spain. Nevertheless, the firmness of Galvez, the good temper of the Mexicans, and their habitual submission to authority, overcame all difficulties. The inhabitants of Cordova were not deprived of all control over the cultivation of tobacco, and were simply obliged to sell it to the officers of the king at a definite price, whilst these personages were ordered to continue supplying the families of the poor, with materials for the manufacture of cigars; and by this device the public treasury was enabled to derive an important revenue from an article of universal consumption. Thus the visitador appears to have employed his authority in the reform of the colony and the augmentation of the royal revenue, without much attention to the actual viceroy, who was displaced in 1766. The fiscal or attorney general of the Audiencia of Manilla, Don José Aréché, was ordered officially to examine into the executive conduct of the Marques de Cruillas who had retired from the city of Mexico to Cholula, and although it had been universally the custom to permit other viceroys to answer the charges made against them by attorney, this favor was denied to the Marques, who was subjected to much inconvenience and suffering during the long trial that ensued.

Don Carlos Francisco de Croix, Marques de Croix,
XLV. Viceroy of New Spain.
1766–1771.

The Marques de Croix was a native of the city of Lille in Flanders, and, born of an illustrious family, had obtained his military renown by a service of fifty years in the command of Ceuta, Santa-Maria, and the Captaincy General of Galicia. He entered Mexico as viceroy on the 25th of August, 1766.

For many years past, in the old world and in the new, there had been a silent but increasing fear of the Jesuits. It was known that in America their missionary zeal among the Indians in the remotest provinces was unequalled. The winning manners of the cultivated gentlemen who composed this powerful order in the Catholic church, gave them a proper and natural influence with the children of the forest, whom they had withdrawn from idolatry and partially civilized. But the worthy Jesuits, did not confine their zealous labors to the wilderness. Members of the order, all of whom were responsible and implicitly obedient to their great central power, were spread throughout the world, and were found in courts and camps as well as in the lonely mission house of the frontier or in the wigwam of the Indian. They had become rich as well as powerful, for, whilst they taught christianity, they did not despise the wealth of the world. Whatever may have been their personal humility, their love for the progressive power and dignity of the order, was never permitted for a moment to sleep. A body, stimulated by such a combined political and ecclesiastical passion, all of whose movements, might be controlled by a single, central, despotic will, may now be kept in subjection in the old world, where the civil and military police is ever alert in support of the national authorities. But, at that epoch of transition in America whose vast regions were filled with credulous and ignorant aborigines, and thinly sprinkled with intelligent, educated and loyal Europeans, it was deemed dangerous to leave the superstitious Indians to become the prey, rather than the flock,—the instruments, rather than the acolytes of such insidious shepherds. These fears had seized the mind of Charles III. who dreaded a divided dominion in America, with the venerable fathers. We do not believe that there was just cause for the royal alarm. We do not suppose that the Jesuits whose members, it is true, were composed of the subjects of all the Catholic powers of Europe, ever meditated political supremacy in Spanish America, or designed to interfere with the rights of Charles or his successors. But the various orders of the Roman church,—the various congregations, and convents of priests and friars,—are unfortunately, not free from that jealous rivalry which distinguishes the career of laymen in all the other walks of life.

It may be that some of the pious brethren, whose education, manners, position, wealth or power, was not equal to the influence, social rank and control, of the Jesuits, had, perhaps, been anxious to drive this respectable order from America. It may be, that the king and his council were willing to embrace any pretext to rid his colonial possessions of the Jesuits. But certain it is, that on the 25th of June, before the dawn of day, at the same hour, throughout the whole of New Spain the decree for their expulsion was promulgated by order of Charles. The king was so anxious upon this subject, that he wrote, with his own hand, to the viceroy of Mexico, soliciting his best services in the fulfilment of the royal will. When the question was discussed in the privy council of the sovereign, a chart of both Americas was spread upon the table,—the distances between the colleges of the Jesuits accurately calculated,—and the time required for the passage of couriers, carefully estimated, so that the blow might fall simultaneously upon the order. The invasion of Havana by the English and its successful capture, induced the king to supply his American possessions with better troops, and more skilful commanders than had been, hitherto, sent to the colonies. Thus there were various, veteran Spanish regiments in Mexico capable of restraining any outbreaks of the people in favor of the outraged fathers who had won their respect and loyal obedience.

At the appointed hour, the order of Charles, was enforced. The Jesuits were shut up in their colleges, and all avenues to these retreats of learning and piety were filled with troops. The fathers were despatched from Mexico for Vera Cruz on the 28th of June, surrounded by soldiers. They halted awhile in the town of Guadalupe, where the Visitador Galvez, who governed the expedition, permitted them to enter, once more, into the national sanctuary, where amid the weeping crowds of Mexicans, they poured forth their last, and fervent vows, for the happiness of a people, who idolized them. Their entrance into Jalapa was a triumph. Windows, balconies, streets, and house tops were filled with people, whose demeanor manifested what was passing in their hearts, but who were restrained by massive ranks of surrounding soldiery from all demonstration in behalf of the banished priests. In Vera Cruz some silent but respectful tokens of veneration were bestowed upon the fathers, several of whom died in that pestilential city before the vessels were ready to transport them beyond the sea. Nor did their sufferings cease with their departure from New Spain. Their voyage was long, tempestuous and disastrous, and after their arrival in Spain, under strict guardianship, they were again embarked for Italy, where they were finally settled with a slender support in Rome, Bologna, Ferrara and other cities, in which they honored the country whence they had been driven by literary labors and charitable works. The names of Abade, Alegre, Clavigero, Landibares, Maneyro, Cavo, Lacunza and Marques, sufficiently attest the historical merit of these Mexican Jesuits, who were victims of the suspicious Charles. For a long time the Mexican mind was sorely vexed by the oppressive act against this favorite order. But the Visitador Galvez imposed absolute silence upon the people,—telling them in insulting language that it was their "sole duty to obey," and that they must "speak neither for nor against the royal order, which had been passed for motives reserved alone for the sovereign's conscience!"

Thus, all expression of public sentiment, as well as of amiable feeling, at this daring act against the worthiest and most benevolent clergymen of Mexico was effectually stifled. It had been well for New Spain if Charles had banished the Friars, and spared the Jesuits. The church of Mexico, in our age, would then have resembled the church of the United States, whose foundation and renown are owing chiefly to the labors of enlightened Sulpicians and Jesuits, as well as to the exclusion of monks and of all the orders that dwell in the idle seclusion of cloisters instead of passing useful lives amid secular occupations and temporal interests. If the act of Henry VIII. in England was unjust and cruel, it was matched both in boldness and wickedness by the despotic decree of the unrelenting Charles of Spain. Nor can the latter sovereign claim the merit of having substituted virtue for vice as the British king pretended he had done in the suppression of the monasteries. Henry swept priest and friar from his kingdom with the same blow; but the trimming Charles banished the intellectual Jesuit whilst he saved and screened the lazy monk.

The pretext of Charles III. for his outrageous conduct was found in an insurrection which occurred on the evening of Palm Sunday, 1766, and gave up the capital of Spain, for forty-eight hours, to a lawless mob. It was doubtless the result of a preconcerted plan to get rid of an obnoxious minister; and, as soon as it was known that this personage had been exiled, the rioters instantly surrendered their arms, made friends with the soldiers, and departed to their homes. In fact, it was a political intrigue, which the king and his minister charged on some of the Spanish grandees and on the Jesuits. But as the former were too powerful to be assailed by the king, his wrath was vented on the Fathers of the Order of Jesus, whose lives, at this time, were not only innocent but meritorious.