The New Conspiracy Against the Jesuits Detected and Briefly Exposed / with a short account of their institute; and observations on the danger of systems of education independent of religion

by Robert Charles Dallas

In all religious orders, candidates for priesthood must be presented by their proper religious superior to some bishop. The prelate may examine the candidate; and, if he has no canonical objection, he promotes him to orders on the title of religious poverty; the superior, or the order, remaining answerable for his maintenance. But no priest of the regulars can assume any exercise of ministerial functions, in preaching, or administering sacraments, without licence of the diocesan prelate, who may examine, suspend, and correct him, incurring thus a certain responsibility. Of this subjection of regulars to the established prelates, surely, sir John must have been aware; why, then, endeavour to alarm us with the prospect of Jesuits colonizing in the south of Italy, for the purpose of overspreading these islands? I have reason, upon recent inquiry, to suspect, that sir John has been misled by his Sicilian informer, as to the voyagers for the priesthood; and the supposed system of seeking

furtive ordinations beyond the seas will vanish before a plain relation of a few trifling facts. In 1806 an ecclesiastical student, on account of his health, embarked for Naples in a neutral ship, which touched at Palermo, where he remained, having learned that Buonaparte had seized on Naples: he was joined, the next year, by another student, who went abroad from the same motive, that of health. To be of use to their catholic countrymen, whose number was daily increasing, by the arrival of new regiments, they entered into holy orders, though, it appears, they were not allowed to officiate as priests among them. These recovered their health, and returned home. In the course of the three ensuing years, one priest, and ten students, who were impressed with a strong desire to study in a catholic university, went also, at different times, to Palermo, where they experienced a similar disappointment in their zeal. Two of the students left Sicily before they were ordained, and one died before ordination, leaving nine, the whole number

ordained. The priest also died abroad. So that, instead of nineteen, there were altogether only nine, who obtained orders: one of these is the distinguished president of the new seminary of education in Ireland. For the last six years, not one catholic student has had a thought of following their example. Such trifling occasional emigrations of a few students will neither alarm nor surprise those who know, that, for more than two centuries, the penal laws have driven all English and Irish catholics, who were not content to live in ignorance at home, to seek education abroad; that this had become an invariable custom; and that every year scores of British subjects went abroad.

Sir John also objects to the Jesuits' appropriating any pecuniary resource, arising from the wreck of their society, to the uses of a seminary of education; he thinks it opposite to the principle, which gave birth to the institution of Maynooth; and is for seizing, and

bestowing on Maynooth, thirty thousand pounds of their money, which they are said to have generously transmitted to Ireland, for the establishment of a place of education (page 39 of the printed Speech). How would this agree with that spirit of humanity, benevolence, and hospitality, to say nothing at present of justice, which prompted the genius of Britain to give an asylum to these persecuted servants of God, against the relentless fury of jacobins and philosophers? Besides, the institution of Maynooth, and the establishment intended differ widely: the college of Maynooth is particularly designed for clerical education; that to which the thirty thousand pounds is to be devoted is to be a seminary for general learning; an establishment, which must be attended with most salutary consequences to Ireland, where it will prevent emigration of the catholic youth, and where, with religion and knowledge, it will undoubtedly confirm and spread the spirit of loyalty. It would be, I was going to say, madness; it would surely be unwise, to check,

on old worn-out prejudices, the happy growth of a spirit, which has, in that country, met much to struggle with, and only wants to be enlightened to show itself as firm and ardent as in any part of the empire.

After all, I have good grounds to know, that sir John is misinformed respecting the source of the gift of thirty thousand pounds to the new seminary: no money has been recently transmitted from the society here to Ireland. The sum, on which the new house of education is rising, was not secured by the Jesuits from the wreck of the society: it is, strictly, the private property of a free Briton. This, I am informed, on good authority, is the fact; but, supposing it had been saved by the Jesuits from the ruin of their continental establishments, from which they were so cruelly turned adrift, and plundered by despots, because they were Englishmen; nay, supposing every guinea of it had been coined at the mint of king Nicolas of Paraguay, could this authorize sir John to assume the despotic

principle of a foreign minister, a Pombal, a Choiseul, and to decide at once, de son chef, in the land of liberty, that his unoffending fellow subjects, who, under the safeguard of the laws, are prosecuting an honourable profession, shall again be stripped and subjected to arbitrary confiscation? If the Ganganellian maxim, that "the accused may be plundered without being heard," be tolerated at Rome, in the "plenitude of power, which the pope possesses, as moderator of the Christian republic," it is far otherwise in this happy land, where men, no longer persecuted for their religious opinions, maintaining their sworn allegiance to their king, are sure for their persons and property to find safety in the laws, and protection from the sovereign.

I have spoken of sir John Hippisley's opinions freely; I trust I have not done it coarsely. I was greatly surprised to find him taking the part he does. Of Clement XIV I feel inclined to speak more harshly than I have. I remember being pleased with his Letters when I was a

boy, upon the same principle that I was pleased with the meeting of the Etats Generaux, in 1789, at Versailles, where I was a spectator: a philosophical pope, and a philosophical senate, were mental bon bons, adapted to the puerile taste of my understanding; but, grown old, I have no relish for either. Ganganelli degraded the tiara, and helped to prepare the French revolution.