Page:Colonization and Christianity.djvu/200

result of ill-gotten wealth, a scene of miserable extremes—profusion and poverty. Those who had been in India were at once indolent and wealthy; the farmer and the artizan were reduced to the most abject condition. "In the colonies the Portuguese gave themselves," says Raynal, "up to all those excesses which make men hated, though they had not courage enough left to make them feared. They were monsters. Poison, fire, assassination, every sort of crime was become familiar to them; nor were they private persons only who were guilty of such practices,—men in office set them the example! They massacred the natives; they destroyed one another. The governor just arrived, loaded his predecessor with irons, that he might deprive him of his wealth. The distance of the scene, false witnesses, and large bribes secured every crime from punishment."