Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/62

 course in the two opposite ways. The Jesuit Charlevoix and the devout Muratori, undeterred by qualms of conscience touching pious frauds, have given the rosy side of the view. And considered from the clerical stand-point, these Missions were the true primitive Christian idea of communism, the society presided over by Saint Paul, and the establishment which Fourier, Robert Owen, Mr. Harris, and a host of others have attempted to revive in this our day. Severe taskmasters, and carrying out propagandism by the sweat of their scholars, brows, the Fathers made this world a preparatory school for a nobler future; they crushed out the man that he might better become an angel, and they forced him to be a slave that he might wax fit for the kingdom of heaven. The learned and honest D. Felix de Azara (Vol. I. Chapter XIII.), who visited the Missions shortly after the expulsion of the Jesuits, and a host of less trustworthy and more hostile authors, show the reverse of the medal. The latest study upon the subject of the Jesuit Reductions is that of the late Dr. Martin de Moussy. Its geography must be studied with some reserve, but much of the historical matter was, I am assured, contributed by the literary ex-President of the Argentine Confederation, D. Bartholomé Mitre.

In most writings, especially those inspired by the Jesuits, two remarkable features of the Missions' system have either been ignored, or have been slurred over.

The first is the military organization which the preachers of a religion of peace and goodwill to man introduced amongst their neo-Christians. All the adult males were regimented; the houses were defended by deep fosses and stout palisades; leave was obtained from Spain to manufacture gunpowder and to use fire-arms, and when these were wanting the converts were armed with native weapons. The ostensible cause was the hostility of the "Mamelucos,"