140 To the River Plate and Back 



and selling on the other side of the river, in spite of 

 governmental interdicts. The exactions of the Spanish 

 rulers continued even after Buenos Aires had been in the 

 year 1776 made the seat of a viceroyalty. Under such 

 circumstances it is no wonder that there finally grew 

 up throughout all the region a spirit of determined 

 opposition to Spanish control. If the people living in 

 the English colonies of North America resisted taxation 

 without representation, and found the Stamp-act intol- 

 erable, it is no wonder that the Spanish colonists in 

 South America, having patiently endured for over two 

 hundred years a system of exaction and repression, the 

 most astounding in the annals of government, should 

 have finally resolved to revolt. Following the example 

 of the Thirteen Colonies in North America, and strongly 

 imbued with the doctrines announced by the leaders of 

 the French Revolution, near the beginning of the last 

 century they threw off the yoke of Spain. The story 

 of that revolution is too long to be told here. 



Trained in the school of despotism, it is not singular 

 that the people of these southern republics should have 

 encountered great difficulties in establishing govern- 

 ments strictly republican in their nature. Though 

 republican in name, most of the governments of Central 

 and South America have been more or less oligarchical 

 in their practical working. The nearest approach to 

 true republicanism exists to-day in Argentina, where 

 with great wisdom popular education has been made 

 compulsory, and where the youth of the nation are 

 being taught in the common-schools those things which 

 are fundamentally true in the life of a democracy. 



It was the good fortune of the Province of Buenos 

 Aires to have reckoned among her citizens such a man 

 as San Martin, one of the purest-minded patriots whom 



