It is, however, to be remembered that Voltaire wrote as a philosopher, and not as an economist, and that his statement most probably would be traversed by those who see advancement rather in material improvement than in moral happiness, for without doubt, in Lima and in Mexico upon the whole, society must have made amongst the Spanish and Spanish-descended citizens greater advances than in the Jesuit reductions of Paraguay. In some respects their almost inaccessible situation close to the cataract of the Paraná was favourable to the early Jesuits, and in quick succession the villages of Loreto, San Francisco Xavier, San José, San Ignacio, San Pedro, and others of less importance, were founded, containing in all about forty thousand souls.[57] So in the Jesuit reductions of the province of Guayrá was first begun the system of treating the Indians kindly, and standing between them and the Spanish settlers, which made the Company of Jesus so hated afterwards in Paraguay. Little by little their influence grew, so that when, in 1614, Padre Antonio Ruiz de Montoya arrived, he found that there were already one hundred and nineteen Jesuits in Guayrá and in Paraguay. Of all the Jesuits who, during the long period of their labours, appeared in Paraguay, he was the most remarkable; one of the most learned men of the age in which he lived, he yet united in himself the qualities of a man of action to those of scholar and of missionary. Without his presence most likely not a tenth part of the Indians would have escaped after the destruction of the missions of Guayrá in 1630 and 1631 at the hands of the half-civilized hordes known as Paulistas or Mamalucos, who from the city of San Paulo carried fire and sword amongst the Guaranís. It is easy to understand that the Spanish colonists, who had looked on all the Indians as slaves, were rendered furious by the advent of the Jesuits, who treated them as men. To-day the European colonist in Africa labours less to enslave than to exterminate the natives; but if a body of clergy of any sect having the abnegation and disregard of consequences of the Jesuits of old should arise, fancy the fury that would be evoked if they insisted that it were as truly murder to slay a black man as it is to kill a man whose skin is white. Most fortunately, our clergy of to-day, especially those of the various churches militant in Uganda, think otherwise, and hold that Christ was the first inventor of the ‘colour-line’.