to make Christianity practicable, and capable of conferring some of its genuine benefits on its neophytes. These were the Jesuits—an order recent in its origin, but famous above all others for the talent, the ambition and the profound policy of its members. We need not here enter further into its general history, or inquire how far it merited that degree of odium which has attached to it in every quarter of the globe—for in every quarter of the globe it has signalised its spirit of proselytism, and has been expelled with aversion. I shall content myself with stating, that I have formerly ranked its operations in Paraguay and Brazil amongst those of its worst ambition; but more extended inquiry has convinced me that, in this instance, I, in common with others, did them grievous wrong. A patient perusal of Charlevoix's History of Paraguay, and of the vast mass of evidence brought together by Mr. Southey from the best Spanish authorities in his History of Brazil, must be more than sufficient to exhibit their conduct in these countries as one of the most illustrious examples of Christian devotion—Christian patience—Christian benevolence and disinterested virtue upon record. It gives me the sincerest pleasure, having elsewhere expressed my opinion of the general character of the order, amid the bloody and revolting scenes of Spanish violence in the New World, to point to the Jesuits as the first to stand collectively in the very face of public outrage and the dishonour of the Christian religion, as the friends of that religion and of humanity.
I do not mean to say that they exhibited Christianity in all the splendour of its unadulterated truth;—no, they had enough of the empty forms and legends, and
