Note 116 — Chapter XIV · PARAGUAY.

The administration of justice at Paraguay is as simple as it naturally ought to be with a people whose civil relations are few in number and little complicated; but the increase of property and the complication of relations will require tribunals more learnedly organized. What the consular government did sufficed to create legal order, and put an end to the reign of force and arbitrary sway, which the Dictator had substituted for the rule of justice; but in criminal trials an innovation was introduced, which, although imperfect, will be perfected in time, when education has made greater advance, and which will incontestably serve as a basis for the institution of the jury, the source of so many benefits. It was ordained, that in order to pronounce criminal sentences, the judge should associate with himself two individuals, drawn by lot out of a list previously made. The confiscations under the Dictator, the enormous fines which he imposed, and which were equivalent to confiscation, had reduced a great number of families to misery; the consular government restored such property as yet existed, and adjudged some indemnities for those which had been disposed of; the rural estates which had been applied to the public service, and which it would not have been convenient to withdraw, were purchased from the former and legitimate possessors. This striking act of equity alone completed a revolution in the social and administrative order of Paraguay.