Dean Funes[335] seemed to see that the flattering of Nicolas Ñeenguiru and the other Indian chiefs was an entire affair of artifice, and that it was but a mere crowning of the victims who were destined to be sacrificed. It may be that the constitution made by Bucareli at the Escorial was similarly but a blind to keep the Indians quiet till the Government had time to exploit them at its ease. Still, Bucareli in all his actions seems to have been an honest man; one of those honest, narrow-minded men who have sown more misery in the world than all the rogues and scoundrels since the flood. Be all that as it may, his constitution in a thousand ways recalled the Jesuits’ polity in their days of rule. In a former chapter[336] I have pointed out a curious instance in which this constitution traverses entirely statements made by the Jesuits’ enemies that their exclusive policy was for their own ends, and not, as they alleged, for the protection of the Indians. But there are other instances quite as remarkable which show that the Jesuits not only had grasped perfectly what the best course of treatment was for their subjects, but that the official mind of Bucareli, trained as he was, so to speak, in the strictest sect of Pharisees, and prejudiced against the Jesuits in every way, yet discerned clearly as an honest man that the plan they had laid down was the most suitable for future rulers to pursue. At the time of forming his constitution he had been gone but scarce a year from Buenos Ayres, and yet he writes[337] complaining bitterly of what was happening in the missions of Paraguay. He points out that all his trouble will have been in vain ‘if the Governor and his lieutenants are not stimulated to address themselves to the service of God and of the King, with that zeal which everyone should impart to his duty.’ Then, after a puff preliminary of the beauty of freedom, human and Divine, he sets forth how the Indians are in future to be ruled. First, as in duty bound, he points out that anything savouring of communism is against the laws of Heaven and of man; that the Indians in their semi-communism were really slaves, the industrious working for the idle, and so forth; that their clothes were scanty; that they were not allowed to freely mix with Spaniards, and were kept a race apart. Then like a prudent statesman having made his apologia ‘pro existentia sua’, and blown off much virtuous steam, he comes to business, and business, as we know, is the great soberer of theorists, no matter on what side they theorize.