.

THE DESPATCHES.
When we read, in the rules of the order of the Jesuits, under the title De formula scribendi (Institut.

2, 11, p.

125, 129), the development of the 8th part of the constitutions, we are appalled by the number of letters, narratives, registers, and writings of all kinds, preserved in the archives of the society.
It is a police infinitely more exact and better informed than has ever been that of any state.

Even the government of Venice found itself surpassed by the Jesuits: when it drove them out in 1606, it seized all their papers, and reproached them for their great and laborious curiosity.