DE CROIX VICEROY THE JESUITS. 



243 



had retired from the city of Mexico to Cholula, and although it 

 had been universally the custom to permit other viceroys to answer 

 the charges made against them by attorney, this favor was denied 

 to the Marques, who was subjected to much inconvenience and 

 suffering during the long trial that ensued. 



Don Carlos Francisco de Croix, Marques de Croix, 

 XLV. Viceroy of New Spain. 

 1766 — 1771. 



The Marques de Croix was a native of the city of Lille in Flan- 

 ders, and, born of an illustrious family, had obtained his military 

 renown by a service of fifty years in the command of Ceuta, Santa- 

 Maria, and the Captaincy General of Galicia. He entered Mexico 

 as viceroy on the 25th of August, 1766. 



For many years past, in the old world and in the new, there had 

 been a silent but increasing fear of the Jesuits. It was known that 

 in America their missionary zeal among the Indians in the remotest 

 provinces was unequalled. The winning manners of the culti- 

 vated gentlemen who composed this powerful order in the Catholic 

 church, gave them a proper and natural influence with the children 

 of the forest, whom they had withdrawn from idolatry and par- 

 tially civilized. But the worthy Jesuits, did not confine their 

 zealous labors to the wilderness. Members of the order, all of 

 whom were responsible and implicitly obedient to their great 

 central power, were spread throughout the world, and were found 

 in courts and camps as well as in the lonely mission house of the 

 frontier or in the wigwam of the Indian. They had become rich 

 as well as powerful, for, whilst they taught Christianity, they did 

 not despise the wealth of the world. Whatever may have been 

 their personal humility, their love for the progressive power and 

 dignity of the order, was never permitted for a moment to sleep. 

 A body, stimulated by such a combined political and ecclesiastical 

 passion, all of whose movements, might be controled by a single, 

 central, despotic will, may now be kept in subjection in the old 

 world, where the civil and military police is ever alert in support 

 of the national authorities. But, at that epoch of transition in 

 America whose vast regions were filled with credulous and 

 ignorant aborigines, and thinly sprinkled with intelligent, educated 

 and loyal Europeans, it was deemed dangerous to leave the super- 

 stitious Indians to become the prey, rather than the flock, — the 

 instruments, rather than the acolytes of such insidious shepherds. 



