Under their able guidance and stern rule many tribes were arrested from pursuing the aimless, idle existence of nomads, and were collected into villages, where church and clergy ministered to their spiritual and temporal wants. Individual members of these tribes were raised to positions of trust and authority in each village or settlement, native “regidors” and “alcaldes” administered law and maintained order; the assistant clergy managed all the secular matters connected with the communities, instructing the people in arts and industries, directing the agricultural labour upon the land, teaching the young, and caring for the aged and infirm. No private property existed in these Arcadian settlements, and the produce of nature’s harvests and men’s labour was stored for common use, the surplus being sold or exchanged to pay the King of Spain taxes and to supply the community with such manufactured articles as they required but were unable to make for themselves. The system evolved by the missionaries proved, whilst it lasted, one of the best ever adopted for governing native races and presented so many points of similarity to the plan introduced and perfected by the Incas on the Western Cordillera, that it is probable the Jesuit fathers moulded their government upon that of the ancient Peruvian theocracy. The simple South American natives were easily led and their respect won by the efforts of the handful of Jesuits whose superior wisdom, strong character, and benign sympathy admirably fitted them for such work. To these pioneers of a just appreciation of the rights of the natives, the country owes much, and it is unfortunate that the priests who have succeeded them have not lived and acted up to the high example set by the early fathers. The falling away is pitiful and the results deplorable, although, perhaps, the present state of affairs is an improvement upon that existing in the middle of last century, when a foreign resident in the city of Asuncion accused the priests of crass ignorance and gross immorality, adding that they were “great cock-fighters and gamblers, possessing a vast influence over women, a power which they turn to the basest of purposes, but they are little respected by the men.”