Secrecy is most generally adopted to cover objectionable designs; and, the profounder the former is, the more objectionable are the latter. I speak not of the secret signs by which benevolent societies recognize their members, but of those associations which, while they are professedly designed for religious purposes, conceal their principles and projects from public view. Although in some other respects secrecy may sometimes be suggested by discretion, yet it is often suggested by guilt. All that offend against the natural sentiments of propriety, shrink from the public gaze. Robbery, murder, and every other infraction of civil ordinations seek to shroud their intentions and machinations in the greatest secrecy. The traitor and the highwayman, afar from the searching scrutiny of the inquisitive, retire to solitary forests, inaccessible retreats, and dismal caverns, to hold their conclaves and plot schemes of blood and depredation. Evasion, prevarication and disguise are the inseparable concomitants of guilt. So secret is crime that its perpetration can generally only be established by circumstantial evidence. Secrecy is, therefore, naturally calculated to excite suspicion; it seldom means good; it generally means evil; sometimes robbery, frequently murder, often treason, always some plot so antagonistical to reason and the welfare of society that its projectors are conscious that publicity would endanger, and perhaps defeat its execution. The shocking crimes which the pious monasteries concealed have frequently been divulged by those who have escaped from their cloisters, but what unutterable deeds the taciturnity of the mute monks sanctioned may not be so clearly proved as naturally imagined. That it was exceedingly profitable will appear evident upon a moment's reflection. These dumb friars were confessors, and as they never uttered a word, they acquired the confidence of the most desperate criminals. The Jesuits, who could not disclose the startling secrets of their order without alarming the fears of temporal princes, confessed to none but to the silent monks. All the devout who contemplated the commission of the crimes of murder, sedition, or treason, preferred to unbosom their designs to the taciturn fraternity, and receive through their agency the absolution and indulgence of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. But the connivance of the church at criminal deeds could be commanded only by the power of gold; and the amount requisite for expiation was always in proportion to the atrociousness of the crime. Now, as the commission of the highest misdemeanors most imminently endangered the life and liberty of the perpetrators; it is as easy to see the munificent pecuniary advantages which perpetual silence obtained for the monks, as it is to see that the most flagitious criminals would prefer disclosing their intentions to the most silent lips.