The great similarity existing between Carvalho, marquis de Pombal, and the cardinal de Richelieu, has given rise to the following comparison.[38] These two great personages had each been elevated from the middling station of life to the highest dignities. Each governed by terror, and re-established the sovereign authority, by cutting off the heads, and humbling the arrogance of a turbulent nobility. Each had the ridiculous pretension of being esteemed wits, and possessed of universal knowledge. Each was a profound politician, an imperious master, an irreconcileable enemy, and yet withal of amiable manners. Each rose to dignities by honourable means, and though alike disdaining to bend the knee at the shrine of fortune, each became possessed of immense riches. It would greatly exceed the limits of this work, were we to attempt to enter minutely into the long administration of the marquis de Pombal; we shall therefore only take notice of some important particulars, and the most remarkable events, which took place during the reign of his master. The respective domains of Spain and Portugal on the continent of South America, had never been properly divided; but in the year 1751, commissaries were sent thither to settle this affair, and on their report the limits were fixed, and a line of separation traced between the possessions of these two powers; this was approved and confirmed by treaties signed in the month of April in the same year; these treaties, however, were not easily put into execution, being strongly opposed by the Indians of Para and Marignan, and still more violently by those who inhabited the countries near the rivers d'Uraguay and Parana. Whatever may be the motives alledged in favour of the war then declared against these Indians, the principle on which it was founded was certainly unjust; for even on the supposition that one power has a right to insist on the neighbouring states adopting the form of government most conformable to the views of that power; it surely can never have that of attacking their independence; particularly after their having conformed to the new established laws, lived happily under them; and desiring nothing more than to be allowed the quiet enjoyment of the blessings of peace. The Portugueze, who dreaded the approach of the Spaniards towards Brazil, and still more particularly towards the mines of St. Paul, and their settlements on the river Parana; and the Spaniards, who were equally apprehensive that the Portugueze, by posting themselves on the Uraguay and Rio de la Plata, should come too near the colonies of Buenos Ayres, Chili, and the mines of Potosi, had by mutual agreement ceded the tract of country lying between their different settlements, to the Jesuits who acted as missionaries in that distant quarter of the globe.