Presidents followed him who were weak in the face of anarchy: Borrero, Carrion, Espinosa. The great _caudillo_ did not lose his influence; many times he was forced to leave his retreat in order to pacify a province or direct a political party. In 1860 he returned to power, to lay the foundations of a stable theocracy. His governmental programme read like an episcopal address. As essential articles appeared {219} "the respect and protection of the Catholic Church, unshakable attachment to the Holy See, education based on morality and faith, and liberty for all and in everything, excepting crime and criminals." He declared that civilisation, "the fruit of Catholicism, degenerates and becomes impure in proportion as it departs from Catholic principles"; that "religion is the sole bond which is left to us in this country, divided as it is by the interests of parties, races, and beliefs." The new Constitution was to conform to the principles of the Syllabus; in Ecuador no one was to be elected or eligible who did not profess the Catholic religion, and whosoever should belong to a sect condemned by the Church would lose his civil rights. In his mystic ardour, he consecrated his country to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and in 1873 he protested, in a note addressed to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the King of Italy, against the taking of Rome and the confiscation of the Papal States. His ideal was the monarchy of Philip II.; the Jesuit Empire of Paraguay; the return of the Middle Ages, and a conventual peace. Like Rafael Nuñez and Portales, he believed that "religion is the only national tradition in these democracies at the mercy of anarchy--the creative agent, the instrument of political unity." Religion is the foundation of morality, and "the absence of morality is the ruin of the Republic; there are no good manners and morals without a pure clergy, and a Church free of all official tutelage." A moralising despot, he repressed concubinage, and imposed Catholic marriage or chastity upon his subjects. Virtue, faith, and order: there was his ideal.