It would not be fair to say that the first Jesuit missionaries to Paraguay may not have been animated by the desire to improve the condition of the Indians, or to withhold from them the meed of praise justly due for the humanity of their motives. It is undoubtedly true, as already intimated, that they did shield them from many of the cruelties to which they had been subjected under the Spanish and the Portuguese adventurers, who overran large portions of South America in the search after wealth. But it can not be too indelibly impressed upon our minds, in this age, that they acted in strict obedience to the Jesuit system, which permitted no departure from absolute monarchism, and centered all the duties of citizenship in obedience to themselves as the sole representatives of the only authority that was or could be legitimate. And not only did their strict adherence to their system make it necessary for them to hold the Indians in subjugation and treat them as inferior subjects, but it involved them, at last, in collisions with the Spaniards and Portuguese, and obliged them to treat the latter especially as enemies, and to impress this fact upon the minds of the whole Indian population. The consequence of this was to create an independent and rebellious Government within the Portuguese dominions, which necessarily brought the Jesuits in conflict with the legitimate authority of the Portuguese Government. The Jesuits foresaw this, and prepared for it. It is a fair inference from all the contemporaneous facts that they desired it. At all events they subjected the Indians at the Reductions to military training and discipline, so as to be prepared for such emergencies as might arise out of their relations with both the Spaniards and the Portuguese. One would suppose that in a Government so far separated from the rest of the world, and governed by those who professed to be laboring alone for "the greater glory of God," the arts of peace would be chiefly, if not exclusively, cultivated. But the successors of the first Jesuit missionaries thought otherwise. Consequently, besides refusing to allow the Indians any intercourse with the Europeans, they would not permit them even to leave the Reductions without permission, or to receive any impressions except those emanating from themselves, or to do anything not dictated by them. The result was what they designed, that the Indians came to look upon all Europeans, whether ecclesiastic or lay, as enemies, and the Jesuit as their only friends. They readily engaged, therefore, in the manufacture of arms and ammunition, and submitted to military discipline until they became a formidable army, subject, of course, to the command of their Jesuit superiors. The sequel of Jesuit history proves that in all this they were unconsciously creating an antagonism which, in the end, overwhelmed them.