ff of
governments should shock modern philosophers, or the modification of
religion disturb their brain; but I know, that very different motives are
assigned for this assiduity of the Jesuits, in excluding the Europeans from
the Indians; motives, which merit honour here and crowns of glory
hereafter. The reader will thank me for communicating them in the simple
and affecting language of the Spanish travellers last cited. "The {161}
missionary fathers will not allow any of the inhabitants of Peru, whether
Spaniards or others, Mestizos or even Indians, to come within their
missions in Paraguay. Not with a view of concealing their transactions from
the world; or that they are afraid lest others should supplant them of part
of the products and manufactures; nor for any of those causes, which, even
with less foundation, envy has dared to suggest; but for this reason, and a
very prudent one it is, that their Indians, who being as it were new born
from savageness and brutality, and initiated into morality and religion,
may be kept steady in this state of innocence and simplicity. These Indians
are strangers to sedition, pride, malice, envy, and other passions, which
are so fatal to society. But, were strangers admitted to come among them,
their bad examples would teach them what at present they are happily
ignorant of; but should modesty, and the attention they pay to the
instructions of their teachers, be once laid aside, the shining advantages
of these settlements would soon come {162} to nothing; and such a number of
souls, who now worship the true God in the beauty of holiness, and live in
tranquillity and love (of which such slender traces are seen among
civilized nations), would be again seduced into the paths of disorder and
perdition."--"Hence it is, that the Jesuits have inflexibly adhered to
their maxim of not admitting any foreigners among them: and in this they
are certainly justified by the melancholy example of the other missions of
Peru, whose decline from their former happiness and piety is the effect of
an open intercourse[62]." It is also true, that the Indians did revolt, if
that term can be applied to an act rendered unavoidable by the horrid
avarice and despotism, which had conspired to sacrifice these happy and
innocent tribes; but so far were the Jesuits from being instigators of the
revolt, that they were in danger of being the victims of it, of which they
were well aware. The facts would form a long and i