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 straggling 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 
