The Spaniards soon hated them for standing between them and their victims. They hated them for presuming to tell them that they had no right to enslave, to debauch, to exterminate them. They hated them because they would not suffer them to be given up to them as property—mere live stock—beasts of labour, in their Encomiendas. They regarded them as robbing them of just so much property, and as setting a bad example to the other Indians who were already enslaved, or were yet to be so. They hated them because their refusing them entrance into their Reductions was a standing and perpetual reproof of the licentiousness of their lives. They foresaw that if this system became universal, the very pillars of their indolent and debased existence would be thrown down: "for," says Charlevoix, "the Spaniards here think it beneath them to exercise any manual employment. Those even who are but just landed from Spain, put every stitch they have brought with them upon their backs, and set up for gentlemen, above serving in any menial capacity."
Whoever, therefore, sought to seize upon any unauthorized power in the colony, began to flatter these lazy people, by representing the Jesuits as their greatest enemies, who were seeking to undermine their fortunes, and deprive them of the services of the Indians. Such men were, Cardenas the bishop of Assumpcion, and Antequera;—Cardenas, entering irregularly into his office in 1640, and Antequera who was sent as judge to Assumpcion in 1721, more than eighty years afterwards, and who seized on the government itself. Both attacked the Jesuits as the surest means of winning the popular favour. They knew
