Unfortunately for the Society, Grouber perished in a conflagration in 1805. After his death, the Jesuits, renouncing the wise policy adopted by their late General, and encouraged by partial success, returned to the inveterate policy of the order, and attempted to domineer over a country which had sheltered them during their days of trouble and misery.
No pages of ours could convey to our readers a more accurate idea of the conduct of the Jesuits in Russia, than a passage of the imperial decree by which Alexander expelled them from his capital. We consider this expulsion, and the motives alleged by the sovereign as having impelled him to adopt the measure, as most significant, and as stigmatising more forcibly than any pamphlet or declamation the abominable arts and practices of the incorrigible progeny of Loyola.
Alexander, after having recorded, that while the Jesuits were persecuted in the rest of Europe, Russia alone, from a spirit of humanity and tolerance, had protected them, had showered favours upon them, had put no constraint on the free exercise of their religion, and had confided to their care the education of youth; thus continued in the imperial document: “It has been, however, proved that they have not relished the duties imposed on them by gratitude, and that humility commanded by the Christian religion. Instead of remaining peaceable inhabitants of a foreign land, they have endeavoured to disturb the Greek religion, which, from time immemorial, has been the predominant religion in this country. They began by abusing the confidence they had obtained, and have turned away from our religion young men who had been intrusted to them, and some weak and ignorant women whom they have converted to their own Church. To induce a man to abjure his faith, the faith of his ancestors, to extinguish in him the love of those who profess the same belief, to render him a stranger to his country, to sow tares and animosity among families, to tear the son from the father, the daughter from the mother, to stir up division among the children of the same Church,—is that the voice and the will of God, and of his holy Son Jesus Christ?... After such actions, we are no more surprised that these monks are expelled from all countries and nowhere tolerated. Where, in fact, is the state that would tolerate in its bosom those who sow in it hatred and discord?” For all these reasons, the emperor, in 1815, expelled the Jesuits from St Petersburg, and forbade them to re-enter either that capital or Warsaw. And mark, that to prove that he did not expel them because they were Catholic priests, the emperor, in the same decree, adds, that he has already sent for monks of other orders for the benefit of his Roman Catholic subjects!
But let no one imagine that this severe admonition from a sovereign to whom and to whose ancestors the Jesuits were so deeply indebted, had the effect of bringing them to some sense of their duty. On the contrary, they redoubled their intrigues and their malignant practices; and as their numbers increased, rapidly rising in 1820 to 674,[423] and they might have become dangerous, Alexander, by another decree, of 13th March 1820, expelled them from all his dominions. In the statement of motives which the Minister of Worship presented to Alexander in asking for the expulsion, we read: “The expulsion of the Jesuits from St Petersburg has not made them change their conduct;” and it then goes on to enumerate all the mischiefs caused by the fathers in Russia and Poland. We can hardly imagine what the Jesuits can have to answer to these accusations. It is also to be remarked that their own creature, Siestrencewiecz, Archbishop of Mohilow, was one of the most ardent in procuring their expulsion.
No Jesuits are now in Russia or Poland, except those who, in Galicia, assist the Austrian sovereign to govern that province—every one knows how.
CHAPTER XIX.
1814.
RE-ESTABLISHMENT.
The events which took place in Europe in 1814 are known to every one. Napoleon, who represented abroad that same French Revolution which his military despotism had smothered at home, fell under the united efforts of Europe, favoured by the elements and by the treachery of his former companions in arms, to whom he had given either the staff of the field-marshal or the sceptre of the king. The restoration of all the dethroned sovereigns followed, and on re-entering their dominions, these monarchs directed all their cares to obliterate even the remembrance (foolish and useless attempt!) of all that had been done, said, and published, in the past time of hurricane and revolution, and hurried back with inconsiderate earnestness to their old and primitive system of governing. The Jesuits, skilful in profiting by every circumstance, then stepped forward, and offered to those sovereigns their unconditional services. Already, after their suppression, and during the ascendant march of the French Revolution, they, with infinite address, had persuaded the different sovereigns, either menaced on their thrones or already hurled from them, that their overthrow—the crimes which, it is unfortunately true, in a moment of delirium, had been committed in the name of liberty—the impious and subversive doctrines which had invaded Europe, and extinguished every sense of morality and religion—all were to be attributed to the suppression of the order. They asserted that the Encyclopædists, after the destruction of the Society, the surest bulwark of the throne and the altar, finding no more opposition, and passing from theory to practice, had caused the revolution, and set the whole of Europe in a blazing conflagration; and this is even now repeated by the fathers and their partisans. We must, before proceeding any farther, give the answer Gioberti makes to their assertions. He grants that the Encyclopædists did make the revolution. “But,” says he, “the Society, by altering and disfiguring, in the opinion of many, the Catholic faith, the morality of the gospel, the authority of princes, and all those fundamental laws which form the basis of all states and governments—in fact, by substituting for religion their own sect—had shaken all principles of morality, religion, and good government, and had indeed brought the Encyclopædists into existence; the most conspicuous of whom, in fact, as Voltaire, Diderot, Helvetius, Marmontel, St Lambert, Lametrie, and many others, had issued from Jesuitical colleges, or had had Jesuits as their tutors.”[424]
However, these monks, who, as we have seen, had conspired against the life and independence of almost all the sovereigns of Europe, now had the art to persuade the reigning monarchs that they would be always insecure on their thrones without the assistance and the support of the Company; and, strange to say, some actually believed them, while others feigned to do so. From that moment to our days, in the eyes of such bigoted and short-sighted despots as the Ferdinands of Naples, the Leopolds of Tuscany, the Francis Josephs of Austria, and all the supporters of absolutism, the Jesuits have been considered as the best pillars and supporters of despotism and tyranny. Nor is this belief destitute of foundation so far as the intentions of the fathers are concerned. The Liberals in our time are in their eyes what the Reformers were two centuries back. Against them are now directed all their efforts; the Liberals are now the accursed of God, the impious whom all the courage and ability of the sons of Ignatius can hardly keep at bay. Nor is this the first time that these mendacious and impudent monks have contrived to impose themselves on different states, representing their interference as indispensable to the welfare of society and to the repression of its enemies. Thus they had imposed themselves as necessary to combat the Reformers in the sixteenth century, the Jansenists and Calvinists in the seventeenth, and again, in the eighteenth, the philosophers and the approaching revolution; although it was not till very late, and when the first persecutions had awakened them from their state of beatitude, that they proclaimed themselves the opponents of the Encyclopædists. In the nineteenth century, the adversaries with whom they are wont to contend are, as we said, the Liberals; and the fathers must, indeed, be skilful and powerful instruments for suppressing all ideas of liberty, all free aspiration, all generous sentiments, all personal dignity, and for keeping the people in servitude, since the supremely cunning Louis Napoleon has chosen them as his most useful auxiliaries, and lavished on them all sorts of favours.