The Jesuits, who enjoyed all the privileges of the mendicant and secular orders, excelled them both in duplicity and rapaciousnes. Animated by a crafty and unprincipled zeal for the emolument of their order, they established mission-houses among savage nations, under the pretext of civilizing them and saving their souls. But this specious pretext was but a pious mask, under which was concealed an infamous scheme of swindling the natives abroad out of property, and wheedling the devout at home out of liberal donations, and splendid legacies. Their extensive mission-houses were neither designed for temples of devotion, nor for converting idolaters; their walls less frequently witnessed the monks at devotion, than they did at plotting schemes of plunder. Like ancient temples, and more recent churches, mosques and fairs, they were designed as centres of trade to facilitate commercial transactions; and, as they were the grand resort of the people for exchange of commodities, they, like the former, gave rise to the numerous villages, towns and cities, whose names they bear. Pagan simplicity has never been a match for monkish craft; and no sooner had the gold and gems of the natives inflamed the zeal and sharpened the shrewdness of the monks, than they were wrung from them by some swindling transaction, Possessing the arts of civilized society, they were enabled to astonish the natives with miracles, and successfully to impose on their ignorance and simplicity. They boasted of having induced multitudes to embrace Christianity; but as their object was not to convert Pagans from idolatry, but to defraud them out of their land and gold, they were careful not to offend them by demanding a renunciation of the practice of idolatry, but contented themselves with entreating their converts simply to adore Christ and his mother when worshiping the images of their gods. With this ambiguous, but insinuating modification of Christianity, they made fortunes out of the devout at home and savages abroad.