“He absorbed in his own person all the functions of government; he had no confidants and no assistants; he allowed no Paraguayan to approach him on terms of equality. When he died, a careful search failed to reveal any records of the immense amount of governmental business he had transacted during thirty years. The orders for executions were simply messages signed by him and returned to be destroyed as soon as they had been carried out. The longer he lived, the more completely did he apply his system of absolutism, the more confident he became that he alone could govern the people for their good. He adopted a policy of commercial isolation, and intercourse with the outside world was absolutely forbidden. He neither sent nor received consuls nor ministers to foreign nations. Foreign vessels were excluded from the Paraguay River and allowed to visit only one port in the southeastern corner of the country. He was the sole foreign merchant. The communistic system inherited from the Jesuits was developed and extended to the secular parts of the country.... Dreading interference by Spain, Brazil, or Buenos Aires, he improved the military forces and began the organization of the whole population into a militia. His policy, however, was peaceful.... “As he grew older he became more solitary and ferocious. Always a gloomy and peculiar man, absorbed in his studies and making no account of the ordinary pleasures and interests of mankind, he had reached the age of fifty-five and assumed supreme power without marrying.... His severities against the educated classes increased; he ordered wholesale executions and seven hundred political prisoners filled the jails when he died. He feared assassination and occupied several houses, letting no one know where he was going to sleep from one night to another, and, when walking the streets, kept his guards at a distance before and behind him. Woe to the enemy or suspect who attracted his attention! Such was the terror inspired by this dreadful old man that the news that he was out would clear the streets. A white Paraguayan literally dared not utter his name. During his lifetime he was ‘_El Supremo_,’ and, after he was dead, for generations he was referred to simply as ‘_El Defunto_.’... He did not rise by any sycophantic arts. Indeed, he never veiled the contempt he felt for the party schemers and officials around him. When he had supreme power in his hands, he used it for no selfish indulgences. His life was austere and abstemious; but, though parsimonious for himself, he was lavish for the public.... In his manners and life, he was absolutely modest; he received any one who chose to see him. If he was terrible, it was to the wealthy and powerful; the humblest Indian received a hearing and justice. During his reign Paraguay remained