So many are the misconceptions regarding Jesuit property that with a view of dispelling them I long projected the course of lectures on the subject. I was, however, prevented from doing as I wished by the incognito in which I was placed by Hintese Ribeiro's decree. God knows what a mortification it was to me to have to assume a disguise imposed by law, but wholly repugnant to my own straightforwardness and natural ideas concerning truth as well as to the heartfelt love and admiration which I entertained for the Society of Jesus.
This matter will require but a few words.
If the government of the society is strictly monarchial, its administration is, on the contrary, extremely decentralized. Each house is separately administered, and nothing can be more imaginary than the bottomless common purse which has inspired so many falsehoods.
As a fact, if in Portugal, thanks to the careful administration of their superiors, the Jesuit houses have been free from debt, they have usually possessed few comforts, and have sometimes endured great hardships.
Residences subsisted merely upon stipends for masses and preaching, or alms spontaneously offered. In the colleges the great expenses required to provide our boys with board and lodging, with the comforts and amusements they enjoyed, and still more with what was required to keep abreast of modern educational developments. All this, I say, obliged us to interrupt our building works till the number of pupils should be much increased.
It is remarkable that while by universal consent Campolide ranked first in respect to board, tuition and hygiene as well as physical training, and while other colleges charged £5 or £6 per month, Campolide never charged more than £4. In the provinces, at Beira, S. Fiel, giving the same education, long exacted only £1 10s.—only recently was the monthly fee raised to £2. Among the recreations provided for our boys must not be forgotten the scientific excursions initiated at Campolide two years ago by myself along with Father Luisier, for the benefit of the elder students who were about to finish their school course and proceed to the university, and were thus introduced to all branches of natural history. The public schools which adopted the same plan later on did but imitate us, and not so thoroughly.
The anti-religious movement of 1901 having alarmed many families, so that the number of scholars decreased, it was found necessary to suspend operations. At a later period, when I myself was made rector of the college, I contrived to make considerable additions, but the troubles stirred up by the revolutionary press checked the work, which has been at a standstill for two years. Such is the truth of our wealth in Portugal.
What am I to say of our seminary fund, that, I mean, which is devoted to the education of young men in the society? How many of our opponents have expended their eloquence in vigorous denunciation of our wealth, without reflecting on the circumstances under which our recruits are enrolled and trained! The training in the society is very slow; one who goes through the entire course is occupied in it for fifteen or even seventeen years. There are included the ascetical training of the Novitiate, then the literary and philosophical and the theological, and as a rule there is introduced one of practical pedagogy for those who are to teach in the colleges.
On the other hand, the great majority of vocations to the order were from the middle or lower classes, and the subjects had but little to obtain from their parents.
