j 2 INTRODUCTION. 



On his removal to Lima, as viceroy of Peru, the same disin- 

 terestedness as to private fortune, the same regard to public utility, 

 continued to distinguish his character. To him the Limanians are 

 indebted for the fine road between their city and the port of Callao, 

 and for other works of usefulness and ornament. His justice and 

 beneficence, during his administration, are still remembered with 

 gratitude, both in Chile and Peru ; and his death, in 1799 or 1800, 

 when he left his family far from rich, was most sincerely regretted. 



This event brings us within a very few years of the period when 

 the South American colonies of Spain began to claim, first, equal 

 privileges with the mother country ; and, finally, that independence 

 as a right, of which they prepared to assert their possession as a fact, 

 which the fleets and armies of Old Spain were in no condition to 

 controvert. The emancipation of North America had produced an 

 effect, at first unnoticed, but which broke out from time to time in 

 impatient and impotent struggles, both in the Spanish and Portu- 

 guese colonies. As the courts of Europe became either more feeble, 

 or more deeply engaged in the momentous concerns of the long 

 revolutionary war, their western settlements came to feel not only 

 that they were strong enough to protect themselves, but that they 

 might eventually be forced to do so, if they wished to evade sub- 

 jection to a power, whose manners, habits and language, were foreign, 

 and consequently hateful to theni. The period during which they 

 were thus, in a manner, left to themselves, taught them to discover 

 and to depend on their own resources ; and the constant demands 

 for money supplies from a distant government, which could afford in 

 return little aid or protection, disgusted the natives with so distant 

 and expensive a monarchy. 



The influence of the church too, which had hitherto been almost 

 omnipotent in favour of the ancient order of things, began to be 

 exerted, perhaps unintentionally, in the cause of independence. To 

 prevent South America from falling into the hands of the French, 

 a nation without an inquisition, and tolerant alike of Jew, heretic, 

 and infidel, became a serious object with the priests; and hence, 



