767 



BOLIVAR, SIMON. 



BOLIVAR, SIMON. 



writings which Lad previously appeared, in 5 vols. 4to, in 1754. The 

 most important pieces in this collection are the ' Letter to Sir William 

 Wimlham ' (which had been first published in 1752, along with some 

 other pieces) ; a short tract entitled ' Reflections upon Exile ; ' ' Letters 

 on the Study and Use of History ; ' ' Remarks on the History of 

 England,' iu twenty-four letters (originally published in the ' Crafts- 

 man,' and afterwards published separately under the name of ' Hum- 

 phrey Oldcagtle ') ; 'A Dissertation upon Parties ; ' a ' Plan for a 

 General History of Europe ; ' a ' Letter to Lord Bathurst, on the Use 

 of Retirement aud Study;' a 'Letter on the Spirit of Patriotism' 

 (dated 1736); 'The Idea of a Patriot King' (dated 1738); a 'Letter 

 on the State of Parties at the Accession of George I. ; ' ' Some 

 Reflections on the Present State of the Nation ; ' and ' Concerning 

 Authority in Matters of Religion.' In 1798 there appeared in 2 vols. 

 4to. (sometimes designated the sixth and seventh volumes of Boling- 

 broke's works), and also in 4 Tola. 8vo, ' A Collection of the Letters 

 and Correspondence of Boliugbroke, Public and Private, during the 

 time he was Secretary of State to Queen Anne, with Explanatory 

 Note*, Ac., by Gilbert Parke, of Wadham College, Oxford.' There 

 also appeared at Paris in 1808, in 3 vols. 8vo, a collection of letters by 

 Boliugbroke, iu French, edited by General Grimoard, who has prefixed 

 an historical essay on the life of the writer. This collection consists 

 for the most part of letters written in French by Bolingbroke to 

 Madame de Ferriul, between 1712 and 1736, and to the Abbu Alari, 

 between 1718 and 17:!u. 



Lord Boliugbroke's writings are now little read, and indeed, in 

 matter at least, '.hey contain very little for which they are worth 

 reading. He had no accurate or profound knowledge of any kind, 

 and his reasonings and reflections, though tliey have often a certain 

 speciousness, have rarely much solidity. A violent, and for the most 

 part a thoroughly unprincipled partisan, he has even on what he has 

 written on the transactions of his own time, and on those in which he 

 was himself concerned, only perplexed aud obscured history ; and this 

 ecius to have been his object. His most important performances of 

 this kind, though they sometimes profess to have been prepared 

 immediately after the events to which they relate, and although in 

 one or two instances a very few copies of them may have been pri- 

 vateiy printed and confided to certain intimate friends, appear to have 

 been carefully concealed by their author from the public so long as he 

 himself lived to be called to account for what they contained, or any 

 of the persons who could best have cither refuted or confirmed them. 

 As a mere rhetorician however, Lord Boliugbroke had very consider- 

 able merit, and in this capacity he may even be allowed, though he 

 added little if anything of much value to the general intelligence 

 from his own stores, to have for the first time familiarised some 

 important truths to the public mind. His style was a happy medium 

 between that of the scholar and that of the man of society or rather 

 it was a happy combination of the best qualities of both, heightening 

 the ease, freedom, fluency, and liveliness of elegant conversation with 

 many of the deeper and richer tones of the eloquence of formal 

 orations and of books. The example he thus set has produced a very 

 oenuderable effect in moulding the style of popular writing siuce his 

 time. The opposition of Boliugbroke's philosophical sentiment.?, as 

 disclosed in those writing* which appeared after his death, to revealed 

 religion, is generally known ; but it is now we believe admitted on all 

 hands that Christianity has not found a very formidable opponent in 

 Bulingbroke, and that his objections for the most part only betray his 

 own half-learning. 



BOLIVAR, SIMON, the liberator of South America from the 

 Spanish yoke, was born in the city of Caracas, on the 25th of July 

 1783. His father was Don Juan Vicente Bolivar y Ponte, a colonel in 

 the militia of the vale of Aragua ; his mother, Dona Maria Coucepcion 

 Palacioa y Sojo : both of very opulent families in Venezuela, of the 

 rank of nobility called Los Muutuauas. He was sent, when about 

 fourteen, to Madrid, for the completion of his education. After 

 remaining several years in Madrid, and paying some attention to the 

 study of jurisprudence, he made the tour of Italy, Switzerland, 

 Germany, England, and France ; and after a long residence at 1'aris, 

 he returned in 1802 to Madrid, and there married the daughter of Don 

 Toro, uncle of the Marquis Toro of Caracas, or, as others say, the 

 (laughter of the Marquis de Ustoriz de Cro, his aije being then only 

 nineteen, his wife, who is described as being remarkably beautiful aud 

 accomplished, being three years younger than himself. In 1509 he 

 returned to his native country, where, in company with the new 

 captain-general of the colony, Don Einparan, he arrived March 24th 

 at the port of La Guayra, and retired to domestic seclusion on one of 

 his large patrimonial estates in the beautiful vale of Aragua near 

 Caracal. The yellow fever, so prevalent in that climate, soon teruii- 

 nated hi* domestic happiness ; for his wife, shortly after her arrival, 

 fell ill and died. To alleviate his grief he made a voyage to Europe, 

 and then je proceeded to the United States, where he gathered some 

 useful political knowledge, and about the beginning of 1810 again 

 haded in Venezuela, in company with General Miranda, and retired 

 to hi* wUte of San Mateo. 



The Spanish colonies of South America had remained in quiet 

 ubmisAKm to the government of the mother country until about the 

 clow; of the 18th century. Then, when revolutionary ideas were being 

 everywhere scattered abroad, the spirit of remittance was aroused in 



Spanish America, aud at length revolutionary proceedings broke out 

 in Venezuela. Before 1810, the disposition to shake oif the tyranny 

 of Spain had already become sufficiently strong to occasion several 

 desperate but unsuccessful attempts. 



The first decisive movement of the revolutionists was made on a 

 solemn festival, Maunday Thursday, the day preceding Good Friday, 

 April 19, 1810, when the captain-general of Caracas was arrested and 

 deposed, aud a supreme junta or congress assembled to organise a new 

 government for the state of Venezuela. On the 20th of the following 

 July or August, the same was done at Bogota, the capital of New 

 Granada, which formed for itself a separate republican government ; 

 but it is far from certain that Bolivar had any share iu these first 

 insurrections, though it is asserted in several accounts that he was one 

 of the principal actors. Soon after the establishment of the inde- 

 pendent legislature at Caracas, Bolivar accepted the proposition to 

 proceed to England, for the purpose of soliciting the British Cabinet 

 to aid the cause of the independent party, and, with Don Luis Mendez, 

 arrived in London in June,' 1810. Finding that the English govern- 

 ment professed to maintain a strict neutrality, Bolivar, who himself 

 paid the expenses of the mission, after a short stay in England, left 

 his companion, and returned in disgust to Caracas. Upon the appear- 

 ance of Miranda as commander-iu-chief of the patriot army in 1811, 

 the declaration of independence was boldly maintained by military 

 force : the tri-coloured flag was hoisted, and the Spanish standard cut 

 down and destroyed. Bolivar was appointed colonel in the independent 

 army, and governor of Puerto Cabello, the strongest, fortress of Vene- 

 zuela. The patriots were successful until the following year, 1812, 

 when an earthquake destroyed, in the cities of Caracas, La Guayra, 

 and Merida, about 20,000 persons; aud as it happened on the very day 

 and hour in which the revolution had broken out two years before, 

 the clergy seized upon the coincidence to represent the awful calamity 

 as a just visitation upon the revolutionists. Priests, monks, and friars 

 were stationed in the streets, vociferating in the midst of credulous 

 multitudes trembling with fear, while the royalist troops under 

 Mouteverde were getting possession of the whole province. About 

 1200 royalist prisoners of war, who were confined in the fortress of 

 Puerto Cabello, having shortly after broken loose, murdered some of 

 the garrison, and by the treachery of the officer on guard, taken posses- 

 sion of the citadel, Bolivar, beiug unable to regain it by storm without 

 destroying the town, embarked iu the night, aud on the 1st of July 

 1812, returned by sea to his estate near Caracas. General Miranda, 

 on learning at Vittoria that this very important place, with all its 

 stores of ammunition aud provisions, was deserted, capitulated in 

 despair to Mouteverde the royalist general, and prepared to leave the 

 country, when he was unexpectedly arrested by a oarty of patriot 

 leaders, of whom one was Bolivar himself. By Inn. Miranda was 

 accused of being a traitor and secretly allied with the British Cabinet, 

 and being delivered with nino or ten hundred of his soldiers to Moute- 

 verde, was sent in irons to Spain, where he died in a dungeon. Bolivar 

 received from Mouteverde a passport to Curacoa, where, with his 

 cousin Ribas, he remained during the autumn of 1812. Venezuela 

 was now again entirely in the hands of the royalists, but the ferocity 

 of their proceedings soon made Bolivar a more enthusiastic convert to 

 the patriot cause, and, with his cousin Ribas, he proceeded from the 

 island of Curacoa to Carthagena, in order to raise a liberating army 

 There, by the influence of Mauuel Torrices, the republican president 

 of New Granada, about 300 men were fitted out, and Castillo, the 

 president's cousin, having joined with 500 more, in January 1813, 

 Bolivar, as commander-iu-chief, aud Ribas as major-general, undertook 

 to drive the Spanish royalists from Teuerife, on the river Magdalena. 

 Having succeeded at Tenerife, he advanced iu December to Mompox, 

 in January 1813, to Ocaua, and in February to Cucutd, whence he 

 expelled the Spanish commander Correa, aud attracted great notice by 

 surmounting every difficulty, dispersing the enemy, and gaining several 

 hundred volunteers, provisions, and money. With this encouragement 

 he planned an expedition for the relief of Venezuela, after first pro- 

 ceeding to Bogota, where the congress of New Granada received him 

 well, and added largely to his means. As he proceeded there appeared 

 to be a general rising iu his support, and he soon found his army so 

 swelled in numbers that he was enabled to form it iuto two divisions ; 

 Ribas led oue, himself the other, and both, by forced marches along 

 different roads, advanced rapidly on Caracas. Bolivar now in reprisal 

 of the cruelties of Varinas, issued on the part of the patriots, the 

 manifesto of "guerra a muerte," war to death. At Lostaguaues 

 Monteverde was routed, and obliged to take refuge in Puerto Cabello; 

 and on August 4th, 1813, the liberating army entered the city of 

 Canvja-i, the capital of Venezuela, amidst unbounded rejoicings on the 

 part of the inhabitants. Marino, who had recently raised au army in 

 (Jiimaua, and from whom the royalist geueral escaped only by being 

 caught in the arms and carried off upon the horse of a brawny Capuchin 

 who was fighting at his side, had assumed the name of Dictator aud 

 Liberator of the Eastern provinces of Venezuela. The same title was 

 adopted by Bolivar for those of the West. At this time he was iu 

 possession of unlimited power ; but he did not prevent the prevalence 

 of popular dissatisfaction, which the conduct of his officers had 

 excited. The legislative, executive, and judicial powers being united 

 in the person of tho dictator, occasioned great offence to the democra- 

 tical party, and suspicions arose that his primary object was personal 



