The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-10-03 00:00:00

THE JESUITS IN ENGLAND.

(From "The History•of the Jesuits, by Andrew Steinmets.")

The rich province of England is likely to be the general
refuge of the company. When their colleges at St. Omer,
Bruges, and Ghent cnumbled under the horns of the
papal bull, the establishment at Leige was somehow
spared. The French revolution supervened : the avenger
included the Jesuits in its fearful retribution ; the college
at Liege was destroyed ;. the Jesuits and their pupils were
expelled. This misfortune was the harbinger of the pros.
perity of the Belgian Jesuits. They took refuge in Eng-
land ; and Thomas Weld, of Lulworth Castle, a Catholic
gentleman, presented the exiles with the domain of Sto-
nyhurst. it is impossible to state precisely the number of
the modern Jesuits ; certainly it is not less than 7,000 of
all ranks in the company, scattered and lurking over
France, Italy, and Germany; settled in various " Mis-
sions " in the east and west, whence they contribute let-
ters for the " Annals of the Propagation ; ' but these let-
ters are very far from being as " curious," as those of old,
the energy, the talent of the company passed away with
the last failures of the original company. The modern
Jesuits may have, according to the Gioberti, all the craft
and cunning of their forefathers, yet neither as apostles,
nor as men of science, nor as authors, nor as teachers, can
they claim the slightest right to be named with the Jesu-
its of old. It was to me a most remarkable fact, that
whilst at St. Cuthbert's College the educational system of
the Jesuits was carried out to the utmost extent (as I can
attest from the experience of six years nearly), I found lit-
tle or nothing of the sort at Stonyhurst ; and the pupils
who had passed through their " Humanity studies" had
evidently not attained the acquirements prescribed by the
Ratio Studiorum. Nevertheless the establish ment " pays ;"
for the " gratis instruction " was not renovated at the res-
toration of the company. The college of Stonyhurst must
receive, on an average, at least £6,000 per annum from
pupils :—the number being about 120, at 40 guineas per
annum, for boys under 12 years of age ; for those above
that age, 50 guineas • and for students in philosophy, 100
guineas. Besides this the college possesses farms, some
thousand acres of good land, over which one of the fathers
presided as procurator. The English fathers have no less
than thirty-three establishments, or colleges, residences,
and missions in England. Of course Stonyhurst is the
principal establishment, where the Provincial of England
resides. The college in 1845 contained twenty priests,
twenty-six novices and scholastics, and fourteen lay
brothers. Of the 806 missionary priests in Great Britain,
including bishops, the Jesuits alone can say how many
are enlisted under the banner of the Ignatius, though
doubtless this knowledge is shared by the "Vicars Apos-
tolic" of the various districts in which they are privileged
to move unmolested. The Jesuits are muffled in Eng-
land ; it is difficult to distinguish them in the names of
the Catholic lists annually published. They have esta-
blished a classical and commercial academy at Mount St.
Mary's, near Chesterfield ; and the prospectus of the esta-
blishment, after describing the clothes that the pupils are
to bring, simply informs the world that " the college is
condui ted by gentlemen connected with the College of
Stonyhurst. These gentlemen are generally sent out in
pairs, by the provincial, according to the constitutions,
and thus may charm by variety ; for the quantity of work
on hand in the various Jesuit missions in England is by
no means so evident as their speculation for more, by this
constitutional provision. The secular priests are doubled
and tripled, by the necessities of the mission; the Jesuits
doubled, tripled, and quadrupled, by the requirement of
the constitutions, and the prospects before them. The
Jesuits in England dress as any clergyman, or any gentle-
man ; by their outward man you cannot tell them. Strange
notions are afloat respecting these men. I have been
asked, by what sign can one distinguish a Jesuit ? Per-
haps the sign by which you may know the Jesuits is their
being better housed, better clothed, and better fed than
most other Roman Catholic priests. This sign is, of course,
equivocal ; but the fact is undeniable ; the " missionary
funds " of the Jesuits are liberally applied—to their num-
bers ; " they give freely what they have freely received."
In other respects the Jesuits show themselves by " re-
sults." They dare not interfere openly in missions pre-
occupied by the secular clergy ; but they are independent
of the Roman Catholic bishops, excepting for ordination,
which is a matter of course. Still, perhaps, lam justified
in believing that their movements in London are consi-
dered by many of the orthodox as somewhat encroaching.
If these doings "in London are " for a sign "as to
their other localities, they are not idle. Nine years ago,
there were only two Jesuits in London ; there are now at
least four in one " residence ;" and if their great church
in Berkeley-square be now finished, there must be twelve
Jesuits in London, to " serve " their metropolitan specu-
lation, as was intended. The vice-province in Ireland
numbered sixty-three Jesuits in 1841, and seventy-three
in 1844. They possess, in Ireland, the colleges, of Con-
glowes, Tollabey, and Dublin. They have recently esta-
blishtd a second " house," in the last-mentioned city.

NECESSITY THE MOTHER OF INVENTION.—In an in-
hospitable portion of one of the Australian colonies there
resided two young men, of education and respectability,
who, with many others, had left their country and their
friends to seek their fortune in a land of strangers. The
place which they selected for their new enterprises proved
to be unsuited to their objects, and a very common lot
befel them—they were reduced to poverty, and compelled
to resort to untried expedients in order to procure the
means of subsistence. One of them commenced a school,
and the other resolved upon an undertaking which, con-
sidering the circumstances under which it was prosecuted,
may be ranked among the wonders of colonial life. The
want of a small coasting vessel to trade between the out-
ports of the province bad long been a source of inconve-
nience to the settlers ; and this young man seized upon the
chance of retrieving his lost fortunes by an attempt to
supply this desideratum. He bad never before been en-
gaged in ship-building, and he had no person to assist
him in the laborious part of such a work. This, however,
did not discourage him. His genius overcame the first of
these difficulties, and his perseverance mastered the se-
cond. The keel of a vessel was placed upon the stocks,
hewn out of the forest by his own industrious hands ; and
by indomitable toil the same hands cut and fashioned,
and conveyed to their proper destination, the various
timber necessary for the completion of this arduous work,
the affectionate schoolmaster in the meanwhile supporting
from his earnings the amateur ship-builder. The vessel
was finished and launched, and, to the gratification of
every one who had marked the consummation of this ex-
traordinary undertaking, rode proudly on the waters of
the settlement. A melancholy event followed. The two
brothers were struggling in a small boat to drag their
newly-acquired prize over a bar which intervened between
her and the ocean she was destined to traverse, when,
from the violence of the surf and the inexperience of the
sailors, the boat was tapsized, and the unfortunate school-
master was drowned ! The bereaved brother was thus left
to plod his lonely way, with his little craft, through the
new scenes upon which he had entered. He progressed
from step to step, rewarded by deserved success, until a
more extended voyage was contemplated. The theatre of
his labours were left behind, the staunchness of his little
vessel was tested by the billows of the Leuin, and now
she lies, safely anchored, in the harbour of Port Adelaide,
the Gazelle of Western Australia, and a gem in colonial
naval architecture. We give her enterprising owner (Mr.
J. Kemp) a hearty welcome to our shores, and with him
all the prosperity to which his unexampled industry and
privations so richly entitle him.—SouthAustraltaßegister.

GEORGE H. AND THE DUCHESS OF QUEENSBEIZRY.—
An anecdote is told of the Duchess of Queensberry's
being forbid the court ; which belongs to the literary his-
tory of the cleverest opera in our own or any other lan-
guage—Gay's famous production. Walpole, justly re-
garding himself as caricatured in the " Beggar's Opera,"
obtained the Duke of Grafton's authority, as lord cham-
berlain, to suppress the representation of his next opera,
" Polly." Gay resolved to publish it by subscription,
and his patroness, the Duchess of Queensberry, put her-
self at the head of the undertaking, and solicited every
person she met.to subscribe. As the duchess was hand-
some, a wit, and of the first fashion, sbe obtained guineas
in all directions, even from those who dreaded to encou-
rage this act of defiance. The duchess's zeal, however,
increased with her success ; and she even came to the
drawing-room, and, under the very eye of majesty, soli-
cited subscriptions for a play which the monarch had
forbidden to be acted. When the king came into the
drawing-room, seeing the duchess very busy in a corner
with three or four persons, he asked her what she was
doing. She answered, " What must be agreeable, she
was sure, to any body so humane as his majesty, for it
was an act of charity ; and a charity to which she did not
despair of bringing his majesty to contribute." This
proceeding was so much resented, that Mr. Stanhope,
vice-chamberlain to the king, was sent in form to the
duchess to- forbid her coming to court. The message was
yeibal ; but she desired to send a written answer—wrote
it on the spot—and thus furnished a document, whose
style certainly exhibited more sincerity than courtiership :
—" That the Duchess of Queensberry is surprised and
well pleased that the king has given her so agreeable a
command as to stay from court, where she never came
for diversion, but to bestow a great civility on the king
and queen. She hopes that, by such an unprecedented
order as this, the king will see as few as he wishes at his
court, particularly such as dare to think or speak truth.
I dare not do otherwise, and ought not, nor could have
imagined that it would not have been tho very highest
compliment I could possibly pay the king, to endeavour
to support truth and innocence in his house—particularly
when the king and queen both told pie that they had not
read Mr. Gay's play. I have certainly done right, then,
to stand by my own words rather than his Grace of Graf-
ton's, who had neither made use of truth, judgment, nor
honour, through his whole affair, either for himself or his
friends.—C. Queensberry." When her grace had finished
this paper, drawn up, as Lord Hervey observes, "with
more spirit than accuracy," Stanhope requested of her to
think again, and give him a more courtly message to deli-
ver. The duchess took her pen, and wrote another; but
it was so mnch more disrespectfel, that he asked for the
former one, and delivered it. There was, of course, a
prodigious quantity of court gossip on this occasion ; and,
doubtless, though some pretended to be shocked, many
were pleased at the sting of royalty, and many more were
amused at the dashing oddity of the duchess. But pub-
lic opinion, on the whole, blamed the court. It certainly
was infinitely childish in the king to have inquired into
what the ductless was doing among her acquaintances in
tho drawing-room; it was equally beneath the natural
notions of royal dignity, that the king should put himself
in a state of hostility with a subject, and in so trifling a
matter as the subscription to an unpublished play ; and it
was equally impolitic, for the world was sure to range
itself on the side of the woman, especially when that wo-
man was handsome, eccentric, and rich. It produced
some inconvenience, however, to the lady's husband, as
he, in consequence, gave up the office of admiral of Scot-
lan d.—Blackwood's Magazine.
The slaves in the West Indies hook rum in a very sci-
entific manner. They first fill a bottle with water, aria
invert the nozzle iota the bung of a barrel full of rum.
Water being the heaviest, sinks down, and the spirit rises
in its place ; and Cuffee thus makes a swap on scientific
principles.