These Jesuit settlements in Paraguay have been too fully dealt with to need anything in the way of an elaborate description here.  Let it suffice to say that the famous communities were in many respects socialistic.  The land, for instance, throughout the mission areas was held for the common good, and its produce was wont to be divided into three parts—­one of which was devoted to the Church, the second to the State, and the third to the private use of the Indian agriculturalists.  It is now generally conceded that, in consideration of the gross, sensual, and totally unintelligent human clay with which the Missionary Fathers had to deal, their efforts were astonishingly successful.  At the same time, the labours of these Jesuits were carried on largely in the dark—­that is to say, fearing the influence of the white man upon their converts, they refused admission to their land to any Spaniards.  This method, as has since been proved, was fully justified by the colonizing circumstances which prevailed at the time; nevertheless, it was only natural that it should have provoked a deep anger on the part of the Spanish settlers, in whose eyes these missions of the Jesuits had as their chief end the enriching of the pockets of the Order at the expense of those of the colonists.

Towards the middle of the seventeenth century matters reached a crisis in Asuncion.  The newly-appointed Bishop, Don Bernardino de Cardenas, showed himself most actively opposed to the works of the Jesuits in Paraguay.  An open hostility soon manifested itself between the two powers, and the strife grew more and more bitter until, not only the entire body of the clergy, but the Governor, the officials, and the laymen were involved as well.  Whatever were the faults which the Jesuits may have committed in Paraguay—­and to what extent these have been exaggerated is now patent—­it is quite certain that Cardenas was a being totally unfitted to be invested with the dignity and responsibility of a Bishop’s office.

It is true that his eloquence in preaching was superb; this, however, undoubtedly arose rather from an acutely developed artistic sense than from any profound religious convictions.  Cardenas, in fact, showed himself upon occasions hysterical and wayward to a point which was absolutely childish.  This peculiarity in a person holding so important a position as his naturally produced utter confusion in Paraguay.  According to Mr. R.B.  Cunninghame Graham, these were some of the methods by which the Bishop in the end utterly scandalized the more sober of his congregation: 

“The Bishop, not being secure of his position, had recourse to every art to catch the public eye:  fasting and scourging, prayers before the altar, two Masses every day, barefooted processions—­himself the central figure carrying a cross—­each had their turn.  Along the deep red roads between the orange gardens which lead from Asuncion towards the Recoleta on Campo Grande, he used to take his way accompanied