biassed, and to relieve his mind he called a council, at which the Provincial Barreda, Juan Escadon, his secretary, Altamirano, and Rafael de Cordoba appeared. The council recommended prudence, and, as the majority were Jesuits, pushed their prudence even beyond Lowland Scotch or north of Ireland limits, for they proposed to institute a commission which, after three years’ investigation, should report at Buenos Ayres on what it had found out. Commissions, royal or otherwise, have always been a trump-card in the hands of governments, since peddling democracy, with show of noses and the like, came in and put an end to those good old methods which are as dear to-day to rulers’ hearts as they have ever been since the beginning of the world, and will be whilst election, battle, fitness, talents, wealth, unfitness, or any other cause, gives power into the hands of anyone to rule. Valdelirios, who was not a fool, saw their design, and instantly despatched Altamirano (1752) to Castillos to meet Freire de Andrade and the Portuguese, and set about drawing the new frontier line at once. Altamirano, though a Jesuit, appears (at first at any rate) to have been anxious that the treaty should be carried out. In 1752 (September 22) he wrote[271] from the reduction of San Borja to P. Mathias Stroner,[272] ordering all the Jesuits to assist in carrying out the evacuation of the seven towns. By his advice Freire de Andrade and Valdelirios met at Castillos, and, after having laid off some twenty leagues of boundary line, returned respectively to the Colonia and to Buenos Ayres. But in the missions things were in a state bordering on revolution. When the letter from the prefect of the missions reached San Miguel, the Indians assembled outside the church,[273] and having learned the situation of the lands to which they were to move, their fury knew no bounds. They all refused to stir, saying they had inherited their lands from their forefathers and by the grace of God.[274] Their example was at once followed by three more of the towns, and virtually a state of absolute defiance to the orders of the Spanish crown ensued.