In fact, Francia quickly took possession of all the powers of government. He was a true Cæsar. He appointed a secretary of state, undertook to reorganize the army and the finances, and deprived the Spaniards in the country of all civil rights. This was done to gain the support of the Indian population, who hated the Spaniards bitterly. He soon went farther. Yegros was in his way and he got rid of him, making the simple-minded and ignorant members of the congress believe that only a sovereign magistrate could save the country, which was then threatened by its neighbors. In consequence, on the 8th of October, 1814, Francia was made dictator for three years. This was not enough to satisfy the ambitious ruler, and he played his cards so shrewdly that, on the 1st of May, 1816, a new congress proclaimed him supreme and perpetual dictator. It was no common man who could thus induce the congress of a republic to raise him to absolute power over its members and the people. Francia at that time was fifty-nine years of age, a lean and vigorous man, of medium stature, with piercing black eyes, but a countenance not otherwise marked. The son of a Frenchman who had been a tobacco manufacturer in Paraguay, he was at first intended for the church, but subsequently studied the law. In this profession he had showed himself clever, eloquent, and honorable, and always ready to defend the poor and weak against the rich. It was the reputation thus gained which first made him prominent in political affairs. Once raised to absolute power for life, Francia quickly began to show his innate qualities. Love of money was not one of his faults, and while strictly economical with the public funds, he was free-handed and generous with his own. Thus, of the nine thousand pesos of annual salary assigned him, he would accept only three thousand, and made it a strict rule to receive no present, either returning or paying for any sent him. At first he went regularly every day to mass, but he soon gave up this show of religious faith and dismissed his private chaplain. In fact, he grew to despise religious forms, and took pleasure in ridiculing the priests, saying that they talked about things and represented mysteries of which they knew nothing. "The priests and religion," he said, "serve more to make men believe in the devil than in God." Of the leading principle of Francia’s political system we have already spoken. It had been the policy of the old Jesuit missions to isolate the people and keep them in strict obedience to the priesthood, and Francia adopted a similar policy. Anarchy prevailed without, he said, and might penetrate into Paraguay. Brazil, he declared, was seeking to absorb the country. With these excuses he forbade, under the severest penalties, intercourse of any character between the people of Paraguay and those of neighboring countries and the entry of any foreigner to the country under his rule.