POSTSCRIPT. 357 



" them in the common danger to the defence of Peru. The minister 

 " for foreign affairs will lay before you the steps taken for this end. 



" Gentlemen, our institutions and internal administration do 

 " not offer a very consolatory picture. Not one but needs reform ; 

 " and if the happy destiny of the country should place at its head a 

 " genius capable of directing her, all must be erected anew. Edu- 

 " cation, the base of national prosperity, is in the most deplorable 

 " state. 



" Neglected, not to say abandoned, without encouragement, with- 

 " out a plan, we feel the consequences of the evil in our daily pro- 

 " ceedings. The administration of justice demands important 

 " reformation ; or rather, it demands an entire new system, agreeable 

 " to the progress of the age, and to the rights of recovered humanity, 

 " in order to place us on a level with that nation on whom we for- 

 " merly depended, and whose barbarous and destructive usages we 

 " have preserved without profiting by the amendments that she her- 

 " self has lately made. The police, absolutely abandoned in all its 

 " branches, no longer exists, any more than any other establishment 

 " of public utility, either for the advantage of commerce, mining, in- 

 " dustry, or agriculture. 



" Our military force is entrusted to General Freire, an officer who in 

 " fourteen years of uninterrupted services, and of glorious actions, the 

 " pride of the nation, has proved his patriotism and his moderation. 

 " If the proceedings of the junta had not been so frank and open ; if 

 " the testimony of conscience did not assure its members that they 

 " had done for the good of the country all that honour, justice, and 

 " policy demanded ; if in the eminently difficult circumstances in 

 " which it was constituted, there had been any other road to pursue ; 

 " — it might have feared the weight of a responsibility which it could 

 " not have borne. — When the directorial government expired, Ge- 

 " neral Freire was the citizen who enjoyed the public favour. He 

 " was, besides, the only man who could curb the exalted passions, and 

 " the evil effects, the political illusions, arising from ill-understood and 

 " ill-applied principles : in short, he was the man who was to rescue 



