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POSTSCRIPT. 367 
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 ofa 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 
