So he considered it a fool's part to be a Federal! Was it necessary then to be as ignorant as a country commandant to know what form of government was most suitable for the Republic? Was the least educated man most capable of judging of difficult political questions? Were such thinkers as Lopez, Ibarra, and Facundo, with their great historical, social, geographical, philosophical, and legal information to solve the problem of the proper organization for a state? Ah! let us lay aside the vain words that have deceived so many. Facundo turned against the government by which he was sent to Tucuman, for the same reason that he turned against Aldao who sent him to Rioja. He found himself with the power and the will for action; and, impelled by a blind, vague instinct, he obeyed it. He was commander of a company, a gaucho-outlaw, an enemy of civil justice, of civil order, of educated men, of savans, of the frock-coat, in a word, of the city. He was ordained for the destruction of these by Providence, and must needs fulfill his mission.
At this time a singular question arose to complicate affairs. In Buenos Ayres, the seaport and residence of sixteen thousand foreigners, the governor granted these foreigners liberty of conscience; and the higher clergy approved of and sustained this law. Convents of different orders had been already suppressed, and the priests provided for. In Buenos Ayres this matter gave no trouble, for all were agreed upon necessity of toleration. The question of liberty of conscience is in South America a question of political economy, for it implies European emigration and population. This was so fully recognized in Buenos Ayres that even
