By the labours of nearly two centuries, the Guaranies, formerly wandering cannibals and obstinate enemies to the Spaniards, have been reduced to civilization, to religion, and to the sceptre of the Catholic King. With what labour, what expense of lives the Jesuits have effected this—how infinitely these thirty towns surpass the other American tribes in the number of their inhabitants, in Christian morality, in the splendour of their churches, in their prompt loyalty, in mechanical skill, in arts, and in military activity, you may learn from the letters every where published of the kings, the royal governours, and the Spanish bishops; from the works of Doctor D. Francisco Xarque, Dean of Albarrazin, an eye-witness, of the learned Abbot Antonio Muratori, and an anonymous Englishman, whose book was translated from English into German, at Hamburgh, in the year 1768. This work gave me great pleasure, though it sometimes made me smile, especially where the author says, "We Europeans doat when we blame the Jesuits of Paraguay. It were better to deliberate how we may bring about in Europe, what they effect among the Guarany Indians without violence and without money. In their towns, each labours for all, and all for each. Without needing to buy or sell, every one possesses the necessaries of a comfortable subsistence, victuals, lodging, medicine, and education. Money wanting, all is wanting, say the Europeans; the Guaranies, on the other hand, though destitute of gold and silver, though unacquainted with any kind of money, daily experience the truth of the aphorism, _Dii laboribus omnia vendunt_, God gives every thing to labour. Proportioning the task to their age, their sex, and their strength, they are always employed, never oppressed with labour. Of luxuries they are ignorant, superfluity they know not, yet are happier in their contentment than the wealthiest in their opulence. He is not prosperous to whom much abounds, but whom little suffices. The Jesuit priests are curates not of the souls, but of the bodies of the Guaranies." Being in subjection only to the Catholic King and the royal governours, not in dreaded slavery amongst private Spaniards, like the other Indians, the towns increase wonderfully every year in population under our care, and fresh towns were now and then added to the old ones. In the year 1732, 141,252 inhabitants were reckoned in the thirty colonies of the Guaranies; but the small-pox breaking out soon after, cut off thirty thousand of them. Some time after it returned again, but in a milder form, and eleven thousand only were its victims. The measles, likewise, so fatal to Americans, made repeated ravages to a frightful extent. I write from experience in both, for in my office of priest, I attended the sick of the small-pox and measles, day and night, for many months. Famine, also, arising from the continued drought and consequent density of the land, filled the tombs with Guaranies. Add to