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alone amidst five or six hundred Indians ? and 

 that it is difficult for him to form among- them 

 a governador, an alcade, or a fiscal, who may 

 serve him as an interpreter ? If in place of the 

 system of the missionaries some other means of 

 civilization were substituted, we might rather 

 say some softening of manners (for the reduced 

 Indian has less barbarous manners without hav- 

 ing acquired greater knowledge) ; if, instead of 

 keeping the whites at a distance, they could be 

 mingled with the natives recently united in vil- 

 lages, the American idioms would soon be re- 

 placed by the languages of Europe, and the na- 

 tives would receive in those languages the great 

 mass of new ideas, which are the fruit of ci- 

 vilization. Then the introduction of general 

 tongues, such as that of the Incas, or the Gua- 

 rani, without doubt would become useless. 

 But after having lived so long in the Missions 

 of South America, after having viewed so close- 

 ly the advantages and the abuses of the system 

 of the missionaries, I may be permitted to 

 doubt, whether it would be easy to abandon 

 this system ; which is very capable of being 

 rendered more perfect, and affords preparatory 

 means for another more conformable to our 

 ideas of civil liberty. It may be objected to 

 me, that the Romans * succeeded in rapidly in- 



* I believe we must look into the character of the natives 

 and the state of their civilization, and not into the structure 



