Note 4 — Chapter I

The exchange to which Walpole refers was not accomplished without serious difficulty, the Indian Militia raised by the Jesuits having long successfully resisted the Spanish and Portuguese forces employed to carry the treaty into effect. The transaction has generally been ascribed to the intrigues of the Dominicans, the ancient enemies of the Jesuits, and their competitors for spiritual dominion in the New World. The conspiracy of Tavora quickly followed, and furnished Pombal with the ostensible pretext he so ardently desired, for the expulsion of the order from Portugal (in 1759), and it also shook their influence throughout Europe. They lingered on in France, proscribed by the Parliaments, and odious to the great majority of the people, until 1764, when the edict against them was wrung from Louis XV. by the importunities of Choiseul. The same minister has been supposed to have determined the Court of Spain to pursue a similar course; and no doubt his influence and that of his master were used for that purpose. But the real author of the bold and statesmanlike measure described in the text, was Don Pedro D’Aranda, the Captain-General, and President of the Council of Castile. During a lengthened absence from Spain, he had formed in the society of Montesquieu, D’Alembert, and Diderot, as well as of Frederic the Great, plans of national reform, which he knew to be incompatible with the existence of the Jesuits; and from the moment of his accession to power he seems to have been bent on their destruction. His manly and persuasive eloquence, a mind full of resources, and a character indomitably resolute, gained him an extraordinary sway over the divided councils of an ignorant and imbecile Court. The Jesuits had irritated Charles by their intrigues, both at Rome and Madrid, during the reign of his predecessor. Their interference with the various departments of the State had gradually identified them, in the opinion of the people, with the grievous abuses under which the country suffered, and all the rising talent of Spain was secretly opposed to them. D’Aranda boldly arraigned them as the instigators of the insurrection against Squillaci, which, for some hours, had placed the royal family and the capital at the mercy of the mob. He availed himself of the influence he had acquired by quelling that insurrection to press the charge with his characteristic impetuosity. The alarm of the King, and the confidence of the accuser, supplied the deficiency of conclusive proofs, and D’Aranda prevailed.

No sooner was the edict obtained, than it appeared that the most minute arrangements had been made throughout Spain for its immediate execution by Campomanes, then a young man, and lately appointed to the ministry; and the skill with which this was accomplished is still cited by the native historians as the masterpiece of that statesman, high as his reputation deservedly stands in his own country as an economist, a writer, and a minister. See the Supplementary Chapter by Muriel to the French translation of Coxe’s History of the Spanish Bourbons, vol. v. p. 65; one of the most valuable of that work.—E.