The influx of foreigners alone worked an enormous influence in this direction.  A country which until the revolution had been governed in a more autocratic fashion than probably any other in the modern history of the world had suddenly opened its doors, and its people stood blinking in the powerful light shining from the European civilization—­an outer world, of which the majority of the colonists had had no previous conception.

That many of these should have lost their heads was quite inevitable.  A number of intellectuals took France’s Jean-Jacques Rousseau and her other contemporary prophets as models, or rather as gods, before whom they fell down and worshipped.  The trend of the nation became strongly and even curiously materialistic.  In this respect it must be confessed that Argentina and Uruguay more especially have continued to follow the French school of thought.

This departure in itself was enough to cause a profound disturbance in the breasts of the majority of those in themselves neither leaders nor intellectuals, but plain men imbued with the very true, if intensely narrow, devotion and piety of the old-fashioned Spaniard.  The force of the convulsion was doubled from the mere fact of its astonishing suddenness, and the religious and political earthquake, once started, went rumbling and roaring ceaselessly the length of the startled Continent.

Speaking quite frankly, there seems very little doubt that in the two countries mentioned the influence of religion died in the birth struggles of the Republics.  In the course of the innumerable civil wars which tortured these lands for half a century and more afterwards, religious emblems were from time to time employed, and priests were occasionally attached to one faction or the other; but the records of these latter are such as to show that they had entirely lost to sight their sacred calling, and a number, such as Felix Aldao, became politicians and leaders of these bands, and executed and drank with the wildest of their men.  On a few occasions a religious pretext was actually seized upon by one or two caudillos, who in the most barefaced fashion endeavoured to make this cloak serve their ends.

A notable instance of this was afforded by the famous Argentine chieftain Quiroga.  This worthy was altogether one of the wildest of his kind.  Indeed, at one period he stood self-confessed as a land pirate by the ensign which he adopted—­a black flag, with a skull and cross-bones.  On one occasion, however, when a religious dispute had broken out among his more intellectual neighbours, Quiroga determined to intervene on behalf of religion.  So, when he next made his appearance at the head of his cavalry, not a little amazement was mingled with the dread with which the spectators were wont to regard his grim personality.  For the skull and cross-bones had disappeared from the chieftain’s banner, and in their place floated the words, “Religion or death.”  It was evident that Quiroga was determined that whatever he took up should be seriously undertaken!