Raynal, also an ex-Jesuit, but a man of far higher character than Ibañez, says (tome iii., lib. 97): ‘This treaty met censure on both sides, the ministers in Lisbon themselves alleging that it was a false policy to sacrifice the Colonia del Sacramento, the clandestine commerce of which amounted to two millions of dollars a year . . . for possessions whose advantages were uncertain and position remote. The outcries were even stronger in Madrid. There they imagined that the Portuguese would soon rule all along the Uruguay . . . and from thence penetrate up the rivers into Tucuman, Chile, and Potosi.’ [268] Quoting the Pope who advised St. Augustine on his first mission visit to England, to convert the natives to Christianity, to go slowly. [269] D. Martin de Echaria, Don Rafael de Menedo, and Don Marcos de Lauazabel. [270] From a letter preserved at Simancas (Legajo 7,447), written by P. Diego Palacios to P. Luiz de Altamirano, dated San Miguel, June 20, 1752, it appears that there were in the territory of the seven towns plantations of _yerba_ trees, cotton, and valuable woods. [271] Archivo de Simancas, Legajo 7,378, folio 17—a long and curious letter. [272] ‘Stroner’ may have been ‘Stoner’, in which case he must have been an Englishman. There were few English names amongst the Paraguayan Jesuits, if one except Juan Bruno de Yorca (John Brown of York), Padre Esmid (Smith), the supposititious ‘Stoner’, and the doubtful Taddeo Ennis, who, though said to be a Bohemian, was not impossibly a Milesian. [273] Dean Funes, ‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil de Paraguay’, etc., book v., p. 52. [274] They also said, in a memorial presented to the Marquis of Valdelirios by the Provincial Barreda, preserved at Simancas (Legajo 7,447), ‘That they had voluntarily made themselves vassals of the King of Spain—despues de Christianarnos, nos hizimos voluntariamente vasallos de nuestro Catholico Rey de España para que amparandonos con su poder fomentase nuestra devota Christiandad.’ It was not likely, therefore, that they would voluntarily become subject to the Portuguese, their most bitter persecutors.