INTRODUCTION. 13 



while the revolutionists proceeded at first cautiously, and only pro- 

 fessed to hold the country for the legitimate sovereign, resisting the 

 French usurpation, the priests were always to be found on the 

 patriot side. They began to discover the necessity of more education 

 among themselves ; hence, books long proscribed and placed on the 

 interdicted lists, were sought after, and read with eagerness. Per- 

 sons were sent even to England to purchase these ; and though, in 

 the first heat of the moment, good and bad were taken together, 

 and systems of all kinds mingled and confused, yet all tended to 

 produce an anxious longing for independence, a serious determin- 

 ation to cast off the yoke of the mother country. 



This design was furthered in no small degree by emissaries from 

 the central junta of Old Spain, who came partly to raise supplies for 

 the Peninsular war, partly to persuade the colonies to disavow the 

 sovereignty of Joseph Buonaparte, and to reserve themselves for 

 their rightful sovereign Ferdinand. They brought with them the 

 opinion of Don Gaspar Jovellanos, delivered on the 7th of October, 

 1808, before the central junta, where he says, " When a people 

 " discovers the imminent danger of the society of which it is a 

 " member, and knows that the administrators of the authority, who 

 " ought to govern and defend it, are suborned and enslaved, it 

 " naturally enters into the necessity of defending itself, and of con- 

 " sequence acquires an extraordinary and legitimate right of insur- 

 " rection." The South Americans were too much in earnest in their 

 wishes for independence to let slip so favourable a pretext, and those 

 who had not begun the work of revolution before, now advanced 

 . towards it with greater or less caution as their situation permitted. 



But there is no comparison between the circumstances under 

 which the British colonies of. North America asserted their inde- 

 pendence, and those in which the Spaniards in South America are 

 now struggling for it. The Spanish colonies, from the first, had 

 furnished such abundance of gold and silver, that they became at 

 once the objects of the attention, and of the interference of the 

 government in Europe. The whole cumbersome machinery of an 



