Geographical Collections. 139 
people condemned to prison join in the work. He also opened new roads with 
the arms of the countrymen. Every body was obliged to assist in the great work. 
Some built, others laboured, others opened roads. The noise of work-shops was 
heard on every side. There was enough to do at home, without having any 
thing to do with foreign parts. The new capital, which was now only reached by 
fine and excellent roads, became by constant labour a finer, healthier, more regu- 
lar town than the ancient. one, and worthy of being one day the seat of that re- 
public whose foundation was thus laid by the hand of tyranny. 
One of the greatest evils under which Paraguay laboured, was its being sur- 
rounded by wld people, who came to ravage the country, to carry away cattle, to 
pilfer crops, to commit all kinds of depredations, without the inhabitants being 
able to find any means of preventing them, or of punishing them; for they ran 
afterwards into the deserts, where it was scarcely possible to overtake them. The 
spoils were more particularly committed along the river Paraguay. ‘The savages 
took advantage of the time when the water was low, to traverse it, and spread 
themselves over the country, which caused a great desolation, and did much harm 
to agriculture. People cared very little to cultivate fields, that the crops might 
e robbed, or to bring up flocks, to see them carried away by savages. 
The dictator, who had nothing so much at heart as the fertility of the lands, 
ordered little forts to be built in palisades, at a short distance from one another, 
of which the largest were guided by troops of the line, and the smaller ones by 
the inhabitants of villages. At the time when the waters of the river were low, 
it was guarded by boats; and, as the different forts communicated together at 
the signal of the enemy’s approach, the infantry united with the inhabitants, who 
then had officers capable of directing them, and by these means an end was put 
to these fearful devastations. 
Without order and economy a state inclines to ruin. The dictator adminis- 
tered the affairs of the state like a good father of a family. The revenue consist- 
ed of the duties on sales and stamps ; of taxes on fields and houses ; of custom- 
house duties ; of the confiscation of the goods of condemned persons, or of stran- 
gers who died without any family ; and more especially of the produce of the 
state lands, where were kept numerous flocks of sheep. He superintended every 
thing with an extreme attention. He taxed the price of articles of sale, to sup- 
press the avidity of merchants ; and he frequently conversed with shepherds and 
ploughmen upon the possibility of bringing improvements into agriculture, and on 
the rearing of sheep. He so seldom suffered himself to be deceived, that, having 
by drawing some chalk lines on a piece of cloth, detected in a tailor a wish to 
cheat him, he had him put in prison. 
It was thus through order, care, and activity, that public riches increased, and 
in the midst of which Francia lived like a simple citizen, having for all his pro- 
perty only the half of a town-house, and a little country-seat left to him by his 
parents. He cared so little for riches, that, before coming into a public situation, 
finding that he had 800 piastres; he considered this sum as too much for a single 
man. He gambled with it, and rejoiced at its loss. His mind was so entirely 
deprived of avarice, that he was always in arrear in receiving the appointments 
attached to the dictatorship. 
It was principally to the morals of the people that the dictator directed his re- 
forms, and, as they were infected with a spirit of superstition, he gave himself 
much trouble to bring about a change. He forbade nocturnal processions and 
ceremonies in the church, as being a rendezvous for intrigue and corruption. He 
destroyed the monkish establishments, as they were too much given to inconti- 
nence and disorder. He overthrew the tribunal of the Inquisition, as the most 
dangerous enemy of a religion of love and charity. He thought it his duty to 
reform the calendar, by abolishing a great number of feasts, which cherished that 
idleness of which he was the declared enemy. 
It was by these innovations that he threw off the yoke of the Pope, whose au- 
thority he contemned so much, as to say he would make him his first priest if 
