The New Conspiracy Against the Jesuits Detected and Briefly Exposed: With a Short Account of Their Institute; And Observations on the Danger of Systems of Education Independent of Religion

In 1773, the Jesuit order, Europe's most influential teaching order, was abolished by papal decree under intense political pressure. Their schools were closed, their members scattered, their reputation dismantled. Robert Charles Dallas believed this was not justice but conspiracy. Written in 1815, this passionate defense argues that the Jesuits were victims of a coordinated campaign by political rivals and religious competitors who resented their influence and independence. Dallas, who had witnessed their work in the West Indies, found contemporary attacks on the Jesuits slanderous and historically illiterate. He dissects the biases, misinformation, and outright fabrication that had accumulated around the order, particularly in popular literature. His central argument: the suppression of the Jesuits damaged education and society, and the narrative of their alleged crimes was engineered rather than discovered. This is less a neutral history than a contrarian's manifesto, a spirited attempt to rehabilitate an order that the Enlightenment had declared beyond redemption.