INTRODUCTION. 



71 



which happens to be uppermost. The congress of 

 1815 passed a resolution requiring the director t » send 

 an envoy to the pope, for the purpose of regulating 

 their spiritual affairs; one was actually sent, but his 

 holiness haJ espoused the cause of Spain, and fulmi- 

 nated an excommunication against the patriots. This 

 thunderbolt, once so terrible, was perfectly harmless at 

 Buenos Ayres, being carried off by the lightning rod 

 of the revolution. The only effect it had was to put 

 a stop to the sale of bulls and dispensations, so inju- 

 rious to public morals, and so gross an imposition 

 upon the common sense of the people. Yet so slowly 

 do men give up old fixed habits, that it was thought 

 necessary during lent, to put a general notice on the 

 door of the cathedral, that all persons who thought 

 proper might eat beef, which could only be done be- 

 fore, with a safe conscience, by a special dispensation 

 procured at the expense of six or eight rials. I read 

 this notice myself. Beef is the common food, and the 

 poorer classes would find it difficult to subsist without 

 it; hence a considerable revenue was formerly raised 

 from this sale of bulls. I am not to be understood to 

 convey an idea, that the people are not, when viewed 

 with the eyes of a citizen of the United States, super- 

 stitious; they are only somewhat less superstitious 

 than formerly. It is however a singular fact, that 

 the catholic church in South America is more inde- 

 pendent of the pope than even that of the United 

 States or Ireland: and it appears to me, that the in- 

 evitable consequence of the independence of Sooth 

 America, will be its independence of the papal hier- 

 rachy. 



The subject of the royal revenues is one of the most 



