Indians, who held his stirrup for him when he got upon his horse. To find him in the humour to give tongue about the Jesuits was a trump-card in Bucareli’s hand, for if it could be proved that in 1750 they had resisted the forces of the crown of Spain, the public, always anxious to believe a lie, would naturally applaud the action of the King in their expulsion from his territories. Nicolas, who seems to have been but a poor creature at the best, testified that everything which he had done as General of the Indians was by the order of Fathers Limp and Ennis, and that he was a poor Indian who did but that which he was told. He finished up his testimony with thanks to the good King for having taken him out of the power of the Jesuits, and kept him in his post of mayor at Concepcion. In fact, all was the same to him as long as he was left with his alcalde’s staff.[334] Upon August 14, 1778, Bucareli sailed for Spain, leaving Don Juan José Vertiz as his successor in the viceroyalty of the provinces of the River Plate. The missions were all placed under the care of friars of the begging Orders, chiefly Franciscans, and the system of the Jesuit government was left unchanged. In 1771, writing from San Lorenzo (el Escorial) in Spain, Bucareli, who seemed fated never to escape from the affairs of Paraguay, sends a long constitution for the thirty towns which follows all the Jesuits’ rules of government to the last tittle of their policy. Brabo has preserved the document, which runs to forty-seven pages of close print in its entirety. A carefully thought-out and well-conceived digest of a constitution it most certainly is, and yet it follows to the most minute particular the policy the Jesuits laid down.