Since the expulsion of the Jesuits the Church had sadly deteriorated and fallen low in its influence for good upon the population, and his efforts were untiring in endeavouring to arouse the clergy to a proper sense of their secular duties. He himself held advanced and enlightened views which inspired him with contempt for the supine Church and its sensual, indolent priesthood. He never attended Mass, and consistently refused to profess adherence to a faith in which he had no belief, but his absolute honesty and devotion to the best interests of his people were unquestionable, and his methods saved the country from many years of anarchy. Purging the State of dishonest servants, he set an example which other republics might follow with advantage, and his benevolence to the poor and weak was only equalled by his severity towards the rich and strong. In appearance this singular man was lean, tall, saturnine, and forbidding, whilst his qualities were a blend of those associated with Cromwell, Napoleon, and Robespierre. He filled his subjects with an abiding dread, and they almost feared to mention his awful name. During his lifetime he was “El Supremo,” and during the years immediately after his death he was referred to as “El Defuncto.” Few save his bodyguard dared to approach him, and when he passed through the streets he ordered the people to retire within their houses and close all doors and windows upon pain of death, whilst anyone found loitering in the road leading from the palace to the barracks of San Francisco, almost the only one he traversed, was severely beaten by the soldiers. He frustrated numerous plots made for his assassination, and many weird stories are told of him and his peculiar relations with his subjects. One old lady used to relate how when a child she was sent one day to the market-place to buy oranges, and was returning with her apron filled with them when hastily turning a corner she came unexpectedly upon the dreaded Dictator. She immediately fell upon her knees and begged for her life, the oranges meanwhile scattering in all directions. Francia smiled, and gently said, “Go, my daughter, you have done no wrong,” then rode upon his way. On another occasion a funeral procession crossed the road as he approached, and the bearers immediately dropped the bier, priests and mourners hiding themselves behind the hedge at the roadside until he had passed. When in the year 1820 a plague of locusts (a common scourge of the country) destroyed all the crops and ruin and starvation stared the people in the face, the Dictator issued orders to the agriculturists to at once sow fresh patches of land, enforcing his decree with the threat of heavy penalties, with the result that a fairly good harvest was secured, and the discovery made that the country was capable of yielding two good harvests in each year.