Freedom to him, as it has been to many theorists, was an abstract thing, possessing which a man, even though starving, must in its mere possession find true happiness. He never paused to inquire, as even Bucareli did, if the mission Indians could hold their own under free competition with the ‘sagacity’ of the surrounding Spanish settlers. Therefore he is the authority whom Liberals always quote against the system of the Jesuits. When he inveighs against their semi-communism, the modern Liberal claps his hands, and sees a kindred Daniel come to judgment, as he would do to-day if in Damaraland the Germans set up a Socialistic settlement amongst the negro tribes, and some Liberal economist denounced it with an oath. Azara quite forgets that, as Dean Funes says, the ‘sentiment of property was very weak amongst the Indians,’ and that their minds were ‘not degraded by the vice of avarice.’ Still, Azara was an honest man—a keen observer and impartial, as far as his upbringing and the tenets he had imbibed in youth permitted him to be. Upon the question of the Jesuits he was entirely prejudiced, although few have stood up more stoutly to condemn the faulty system which the Spaniards pursued towards the Indians in both Americas. But on account of his political proclivities Azara is quite silent as to the state into which the missions fell after the Jesuits had been expelled. No doubt he thought that, once their faulty system was removed, the Indians would soon become what he judged civilized, and hold their own with those around them, though of another race and blood. Funes, upon the contrary, fully exposes all the rapacity and incompetence of the new shepherds left by Bucareli to guard the Jesuits’ sheep. ‘Ignorant[346] of Guaraní, and without patience to acquire it, confusion reigned in the missions as in a tower of Babel,’ and he goes on to say ‘an imperious tone of order was substituted for the paternal manner (of the Jesuits), and as a deaf man who cannot hear has to be taught by blows, that was the teaching they (the Indians) had to bear.’ Shortly, he says, ‘a wall of hatred and contempt began to rise between the Indians and their masters; and the priests, who by the virtue of their office ought to have been the ministers of peace, being without influence to command . . . and not entirely irreproachable in their ministry . . . added themselves to the discord and dissension which arose.’