CONCLUSION. 



307 



for a stranger to enter into any permanent establish- 

 ment ; for, ignorant of what is to happen, all he 

 can depend upon is, that great changes will take 

 place, that he must always be a responsible person, 

 while unlooked-for revolutions may cause the go- 

 vernments or the individuals with whom he has esta- 

 bhshed himself to vanish, leaving him in the wide 

 plain without a remedy, and perhaps even without 

 a just cause of complaint. He may have treated 

 with a government which has ceased to exist, or 

 with an individual whose fortune or whose influence 

 may have suddenly disappeared ; and be like the 

 person who came from England to Buenos Aires 

 some years ago, under the promise that he should 

 have a lucrative situation in the Cabildo, and who 

 learnt on his arrival that the Cabildo had just been 

 destroyed. 



I can speak from my own private experience, for 

 I was very nearly in a similar or a worse situation. 

 I was furnished with letters of introduction to the 

 Governor of San Juan, and a copy of the then 

 famous Carta de Mayo, which had been published 

 in that province to insure to us religious toleration ; 

 but had I not fortunately been delayed upon my 



X 2 



