Page:Vol 3 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/724

704 At an early period the friars of New Spain appear to have displayed much of the indifference to laws and independence of action which was assumed by the colonists. Quickly amassing wealth, many of them returned to Spain without permission, while others, attracted by the comforts and ease offered by a residence in the larger cities of the New World, took up their abode in them, and failed to proceed to their destination. Nor did they refrain from intruding upon the occupations of classes outside their own profession. They bought and sold and opened shops; they dealt in cattle, and made the natives toil for them without payment; private individuals acquired property, and monastic communities, in common with the secular clergy, possessed themselves of estates bequeathed to them by persons whose unbiassed action was interfered with to the detriment of their own heirs. Moreover, in their zeal for self-aggrandizement, they encroached upon the prerogatives of the