Whether it is sound policy of any government to expel a race, or sect, or order from its domains, no matter what the immediate exigencies of the times seem to require, is a moot point. The expulsions of the Jews, Moriscos, and Huguenots, and the dissolution of the monasteries in the times of that true Protestant Henry VIII. of ever pious memory, do not exactly seem to have had the effect upon the countries where they took place that was at first expected by their instigators. Expelled by Charles III., the Jesuits to-day in Spain have re-acquired much of their influence. So that it seems that persecution, to be effectual, must not stop on this side of extermination, and this our Lord Protector Cromwell understood full well. The Viceroy Bucareli[309] to whom the task of the expulsion of the Order in the viceroyalty of Buenos Ayres and of Paraguay was entrusted, was no ordinary man.[310] Appointed Viceroy of Buenos Ayres after a distinguished career of public service, he found himself, almost without warning, and without any adequate forces at his command, obliged to execute by far the most important and far-reaching task that had ever fallen to the lot of any Spanish Governor in America to carry out. But as his services had not been chiefly in America, he held the idea which at the time was generally received in Europe, that the Jesuits possessed great wealth, had bodies of trained troops, and so would resist all efforts at expulsion to the death. Full of these visions, says Dean Funes,[311] he considered the order, which was transmitted to him from Spain, as involving serious military risk, and evidently seems to have looked on every Jesuit village as a strong place of arms. July 22, 1767, was the day he chose, keeping his design a secret, and preparing to strike in Corrientes, Cordoba, Monte Video, and Santa Fe, on the same day, or rather night, for the terror of the Jesuits was so great that he designed to expel them all by night. On July 2 two ships arrived in Buenos Ayres bringing the news that the decree had been put in force in Spain on April 2 with success. As all the crew of both the ships knew what had happened in Spain, concealment of his plan became no longer possible. Thus, had the Jesuits possessed either the wish or the means to make an armed resistance, they had ample time to stand on their defence.