er surveying all the plains,
searching all the forests, digging all the mountains, sounding all the
lakes and rivers, to establish the limits of the country, no mines were
found, and the director of the scheme, Gomez, finding himself the dupe of
his mad imagination and puerile credulity, wished it possible to conceal
his shame and prevent his disgrace, by having the treaty between the two
courts annulled. He even descended so low as to beseech the Jesuits
themselves to endeavour to effect the annulling of it. They, of course,
paid no attention to the entreaties of a man, whose insatiable avidity had
caused the ruin of thirty thousand of their fellow creatures; and it was
not till Charles III succeeded to the crown of Spain, that the treaty,
{166} of which he had never approved, was annulled. There was now an end to
the war in Paraguay, so fatal to its once happy, pious, and virtuous
population, who, in consequence of it, lost not only their property, but
their innocence, their piety, their docility, their gentleness, their
simplicity, which were superseded by European debauchery, hypocrisy, and
perfidy; vices that formed a new and almost insurmountable obstacle to the
progress of religion, in those immense regions, where, for so many years,
it had flourished[63].

Having shown the pious nature of the ambition, which inflamed the zeal of
the Jesuits; the paternal nature of the commerce, which consisted in
necessary commodities, taken in barter for the provision of their
establishments, and not in rich products, of various countries, freighted
on wealthy speculations; and having {167} shown also that their conduct, in
excluding Europeans from the Paraguay settlements, was not the effect of a
seditious disposition, I should now conclude this chapter, did I not, as I
proceed, feel more and more a desire to remove the prejudices, which an
extraordinary combination of passions and talents, operating on the
progress of human affairs, has spread over the character of men, who appear
to me to have been actuated by the sublimest motives, such as might be
attributed to angels; the glory of God, and the benefit of mankind. The
picture drawn by the abbe Barruel of one of the ex-Jesuits, who was
murdered at Avignon, in one of the revolutionary massacres, is a genuine
and convincing representation of a celestial spirit, which never could have
been nourished in a corrupt society, which must have owed its qualities to
an exalted one. Thi