“ When the congress or junta of 1813 changed the constitution and established a duumvirate, Dr Francia and the Gaucho general Yegres were elected to the office. In 1814 he secured his own election as dictator for three years, and at the end of that period he obtained the dictatorship for life. In the accounts which have been published of his administration we find a strange mixture of capacity and caprice, of far-sighted wisdom and reckless infatuation, strenuous endeavours after a high ideal and flagrant violations of the simplest principles of justice. ”

“ He put a stop to the foreign commerce of the country, but carefully fostered its internal industries; was disposed to be hospitable to strangers from other lands, and kept them prisoners for years; lived a life of republican simplicity, and punished with Dionysian severity the slightest want of respect. As time went on he appears to have grown more arbitrary and despotic. ”