during its long rule in Paraguay. None of the Jesuits were ever tried;
no crimes were charged against them; even the reasons for their expulsion
were never given to the world at large. Certain it is
that but a few years after their final exit from the missions
between the Uruguay and Parana all was confusion. In twenty years
most of the missions were deserted, and before thirty years had passed
no vestige of their old prosperity remained.

The semi-communism which the Jesuits had introduced was swept away,
and the keen light of free and vivifying competition (which beats so fiercely
upon the bagman's paradise of the economists) reigned in its stead.
The revenues declined,* all was corruption, and, as the Governor,
Don Juan Jose Vertiz, writes to the Viceroy,** the secular priests
sent by the Government were brawlers, drunkards, and strikers,
carrying arms beneath their cloaks; that robbery was rife;
and that the Indians daily deserted and returned by hundreds to the woods.

--
* Dean Funes, `Ensayo de la Historia Civil del Paraguay', etc.,
Buenos Aires, 1816.
** Idem. The letter is dated 1771 and the Jesuits were expelled in 1767.
As the writer of the letter was on the spot in an official position,
and nominated by the very Viceroy who had been the expeller of the Jesuits,
his testimony would seem to be as valuable as that of the ablest theorist
on government, Catholic or Protestant, who ever wrote.
--

All the reports of riches amassed in Paraguay by the Jesuits,
after the expulsion of their order proved to be untrue;
nothing of any consequence was found in any of the towns,