With these excuses he forbade, under the severest penalties,
intercourse of any character between the people of Paraguay and those of
neighboring countries and the entry of any foreigner to the country under
his rule.

In 1826 he decreed that any one who, calling himself an envoy from Spain,
should dare to enter Paraguay without authority from himself should be put
to death and his body denied a burial. The same severe penalty was decreed
against any native who received a letter speaking of political affairs and
did not at once present it to the public tribunals. These rigid orders
were probably caused by some mysterious movements of that period, which
made him fear that Spain was laying plans to get possession of the
country.

In the same year the dictator made a new move in the game of politics. He
called into being a kind of national assembly, professed to submit to its
authority, and ratified a declaration of independence. Just why this was
done is not very clear. Certain negotiations were going on with the
Spanish government, and these may have had something to do with it. At any
rate, a timely military conspiracy was just then discovered or
manufactured, a colonel was condemned to death, and Francia was pressed by
the assembly to resume his power. He consented with a show of reluctance,
and only, as he said, till the Marquis de Guarini, his envoy to Spain,
should return, when he would yield up his rule to the marquis. All this,
however, was probably a mere dramatic move, and Francia had no idea of
yielding his power to any one.

The dictator had a policy of his own--in fact, a double policy, one devoted
to dealing with the land and its people; one to dealing with his enemies
or those who questioned his authority. The one was as arbitrary, the other
as cruel, as that of the tyrants of Rome.

The crops of Paraguay, whose wonderful soil yields two harvests annually,
were seized by the dictator and stored on account of the government. The
latter claimed ownership of two-thirds of the land, and a communal system
was adopted under which Francia disposed at will of the country and its
people. He fixed a system for the cultivation of the fields, and when
hands were needed for the harvest he enlisted them forcibly. Yet
agriculture made little progress under the primitive methods employed, a
broad board serving for a plough, while the wheat was ground in mortars,
and a piece of wood moved by oxen formed the sugar-mill.