After the article to which I have referred in Chapter IX. comes this most curious paragraph, taken in connection with the inalienable right which, according to himself, the Indians had of free communication with the outer world:[338] ‘And because I am informed that many Indians who have been absent in the army of the Portuguese, and have resided for lengthened periods in Rio Pardo, Viamont and other parts, have returned to their towns, you will take care that all these with their families shall be removed to those (towns) either in the interior or distant from those frontiers, as it is not convenient that they should remain on them (the frontiers) or close to them; and thus you will proceed successively with the Indians who return, without leaving one, in order to avoid any chance of communication, which might be most prejudicial.’ Surely a satire on his own abuse of the Jesuits for keeping the Indians mewed up from intercourse with the outside world. It may be that he had perceived the Indians were not fit to hold their own; indeed, it is certain he had done so, for on p. 326 he writes, ‘It is not convenient to leave them (the Indians) entire liberty,[339] for it would be in the extreme fatal and prejudicial to their interests, because the astuteness and sagacity of the Spaniards would triumph easily over their rusticity.’ ‘Sagacity’ is an ingenious euphuism, and might well be used with good effect in the like circumstances, when occasion serves, to-day. But as no single article of any document set forth by any Government can be straightforward and single in its purpose, and as all laws are made with an eye upon some party presently in power, after the paragraph just quoted, on the next page occurs the following sentence under the head of ‘Commerce with the Spaniards is to be free’.[340] ‘It is laid down that between the Indians and the Spaniards commerce should be free, in order that mutual dealings should unite them in friendship.’ Therefore to the ordinary mind it is impossible to make out what really was intended, and whether commerce was to be free or not. Those little differences apart, the constitution ran entirely upon Jesuit lines. That semi-communism which was so prejudicial during the Jesuits’ rule was formally re-organized in chapter iv. of the constitution (p. 343) the instant that their power was placed in other hands. Even the prohibition to the Spaniards to enter the Jesuit towns, and reside there, was formally kept up in chapter iii., with the sole alteration that for three months of the year they might reside amongst the Indians on certain well-defined conditions most prolixly set forth. So that it will be seen that, if the Jesuits did ill, as usual, any ill they did was carefully perpetuated by their successors, and, quite as naturally, all that they strove to do in favour of the Indians was most carefully undone. Chapter XI Conclusion