In the Catholic cantons of Switzerland we have, naturally, the same story as in the Catholic States: a control of education, a determination to cast into the shade the remainder of the Catholic clergy, and a scandalous and enervating material prosperity. Here again we have obtained a very interesting glimpse of the real condition of the Society by the publication of secret documents which were confiscated at the suppression. The chronicle of the Jesuit college at Colmar from 1698 to 1750 was fortunately discovered among their papers and published in 1872.[37] It is a most remarkable ledger or diary of business transactions, displaying on every page that keen instinct for commerce and high profit which the Jesuits are always so anxious to disavow. Vineyards and estates pass steadily into the possession of the college, indignant and disinherited relatives are fought in the law-courts or met by compromise, and the liveliest satisfaction is expressed when some good bargain has been made with the property or the vines have proved fertile. A Lutheran in 1727 has been, in the words of the secret Jesuit chronicler, "simple enough" to pay a substantial rent for a disused cellar belonging to the college; in the same year a pious lady's executors are not in a position to pay a legacy to the Jesuits in cash and they take saleable goods; in 1730 three fields of small value are let on terms which suggest that some simple Catholic tenant was duped. The whole story tells of keenness in securing legacies, astuteness in the profitable handling of the property they inherit or buy, and a somewhat hypocritical readiness to appeal to public bodies for the free grants which they make to poor individuals or communities. The college of Colmar was a business concern of the sharpest character.
These fragmentary notices of the life of the Jesuits in the Germanic countries suffice to explain that growth of hostility which culminates in the destruction of the Society. There is a sharp contrast between the picture suggested by these secret Jesuit documents and the picture offered to us by writers like Crétineau-Joly and Father Duhr. Few, of course, would be so naïve as not to understand that the Jesuit writers carefully select from their "unpublished documents" the occasional letters which some really religious Jesuit writes to his fellows or his superiors. None but an entirely prejudiced opponent of the Jesuits would imagine that all the members of any province of the Society were lacking in moral delicacy and deep religious feeling. In every age and clime there were Jesuits of lofty purpose, great sincerity, and unselfish activity for what they regarded as the good of man. There were many such in the long calendar of the Germanic provinces. But the fortunate accident of the confiscation of their papers in many places enables us to obtain a fuller and truer knowledge of the body than we get from this one-sided admiration of its more religious members and its public professions. As a body the Society, in Germany as well as in France, Spain, Portugal, and on the missions, was deeply tainted with casuistry, covetousness, intrigue for wealth and for power, commercial activity, duplicity in political matters, and a lamentable attitude toward rival priests. They maintained their power, not so much by the affection of the people as by the hard-won favour of princes and prelates; and, the moment these princes became sensible of their defects, their seemingly unassailable prosperity fell with a crash, to the delight of half of Catholic Europe. It remains only for us to glance at their fortunes in Italy until the year when the Pope, whose select regiment they affected to be, ratified the action of kings and abolished the Society of Jesus "for ever."