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250 In fact, this regulation caused the Society many serious difficulties. The rival faculties of other schools, who received payments from the pupils, saw in the gratuitousness of instruction in the Jesuit schools a great danger. By various machinations the Jesuits were forced in some cities to accept fees from the students. It is well known that at present most Jesuit schools are compelled by sheer necessity to accept a tuition fee, because few of their colleges are endowed. But it was different in former centuries, when the liberality of princes, ecclesiastics and cities furnished all that was necessary for the maintenance of the colleges. Nearly all historians testify that the Jesuits imparted all instructions gratuitously; some even blame the Jesuits for thus using an unfair means of competing with other schools.

The accusation of estranging the children from their families is as ungrounded as the former charges. It is also refuted by the fact that the Jesuits opened boarding schools unwillingly and only where it was absolutely necessary. They everywhere preferred day schools, because they appreciated the importance which the home influence – provided it was good and religious – has on the training of the character. Aside