shed; the armies of Spain were kept too busy elsewhere, and the revolution was accomplished in peace. A governing committee was formed, with Fulgincio Yegros for its chairman and José Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia for its secretary. The first was a man of little ability; the latter was a man whose powers will soon be seen.

The committee decreed the independence of Paraguay. Two years later a new convention was held, which dissolved the committee and elected two consuls, Yegros and Francia, to govern the country. Two chairs were made for them, resembling the curule chairs of Rome, and called Cæsar's and

Pompey's chairs. On entering office Francia coolly seated himself in Cæsar's chair, leaving that of Pompey for his associate. This action showed the difference in force of character between the two

men.

In fact, Francia quickly took possession of all the powers of government. He was a true Cæsar. He appointed a secretary of state, undertook to reorganize the army and the finances, and deprived the Spaniards in the country of all civil rights. This was done to gain the support of the Indian population, who hated the Spaniards bitterly. He soon went farther. Yegros was in his way and he got rid of him, making the simple-minded and ignorant members of the congress believe that only a sovereign magistrate could save the country, which was then threatened by its neighbors. In consequence, on the 8th of October, 1814, Francia was

made dictator for three years. This was not enough to satisfy the ambitious ruler, and he played his cards so shrewdly that, on the 1st of May, 1816, a new congress proclaimed him supreme and perpetual dictator.

It was no common man who could thus induce the congress of a republic to raise him to absolute power over its members and the people. Francia at that time was fifty-nine years of age, a lean and vigorous man, of medium stature, with piercing black eyes, but a countenance not otherwise marked. The son of a Frenchman who had been a tobacco manufacturer in Paraguay, he was at first intended for the church, but subsequently studied the law. In this profession he had showed himself clever, eloquent, and honorable, and always ready to defend the poor and weak against the rich. It was the reputation thus gained which first made him prominent in political affairs.

Once raised to absolute power for life, Francia quickly began to show his innate qualities. Love of money was not one of his faults, and while strictly economical with the public funds, he was free-handed and generous with his own. Thus, of the nine thousand pesos of annual salary assigned him, he would accept only three thousand, and made it a strict rule to receive no present, either returning or paying for any sent him. At first he went regularly every day to mass, but he soon gave up this show of religious faith and dismissed his private chaplain. In fact, he grew to

despise religious forms, and took pleasure in ridiculing the priests, saying that they talked about things and represented mysteries of which they knew nothing. "The priests and religion," he

said,

serve more to make men believe in the devil than in God."

Of the leading principle of Francia's political system we have already spoken. It had been the policy of the old Jesuit missions to isolate the people and keep them in strict obedience to the priesthood, and Francia adopted a similar policy. Anarchy prevailed without, he said, and might penetrate into Paraguay. Brazil, he declared, was seeking to absorb the country. With these excuses he forbade, under the severest penalties, intercourse of any character between the people of Paraguay and those of neighboring countries and the entry of any foreigner to the country under his rule.

The

In 1826 he decreed that any one who, calling himself an envoy from Spain, should dare to enter Paraguay without authority from himself should be put to death and his body denied a burial. same severe penalty was decreed against any native who received a letter speaking of political affairs and did not at once present it to the public tribunals. These rigid orders were probably caused by some mysterious movements of that period, which made him fear that Spain was laying plans to get possession of the country.

In the same year the dictator made a new move

in the game of politics. He called into being a kind of national assembly, professed to submit to its authority, and ratified a declaration of independence. Just why this was done is not very clear. Certain negotiations were going on with the Spanish government, and these may have had something to do with it. At any rate, a timely military conspiracy was just then discovered or manufactured, a colonel was condemned to death, and Francia was pressed by the assembly to resume his power. He consented with a show of reluctance, and only, as he said, till the Marquis de Guarini, his envoy to Spain, should return, when he would yield up his rule to the marquis. All this, however, was probably a mere dramatic move, and Francia had no idea of yielding his power to any

one.

The dictator had a policy of his own-in fact, a double policy, one devoted to dealing with the land and its people; one to dealing with his enemies or those who questioned his authority. The one was as arbitrary, the other as cruel, as that of the tyrants of Rome.

The crops of Paraguay, whose wonderful soil yields two harvests annually, were seized by the dictator and stored on account of the government. The latter claimed ownership of two-thirds of the land, and a communal system was adopted under which Francia disposed at will of the country and its people. He fixed a system for the cultivation of the fields, and when hands were needed for the

harvest he enlisted them forcibly. Yet agriculture made little progress under the primitive methods employed, a broad board serving for a plough, while the wheat was ground in mortars, and a piece of wood moved by oxen formed the sugar-mill. The cotton, as soon as picked from the pods, was spun on the spinning-wheel, and then woven by a travelling weaver, whose rude apparatus was carried on the back of an ox or a mule, and, when in use, was hung from the branch of a tree.

Commerce was dealt with in the same way as agriculture. The market was under Francia's control, and all exchange of goods was managed under rules laid down by him. He found that he must open the country in a measure to foreign goods, if he wanted to develop the resources of the country, and a channel of commerce was opened on the frontier of Brazil. But soldiers vigilantly watched all transactions, and no one could act as a merchant without a license from him. He fixed a tariff on imports, kept them in a bazaar under military guard, and sold them to the people, limiting the amount of goods which any of his subjects could purchase.

As a result of all this Francia brought about a complete cessation of all private action, the state being all, and he being the state. All dealing for profit was paralyzed, and agriculture and commerce alike made no progress. On the other hand, everything relating to war was developed. It was his purpose to cut off Paraguay completely from foreign