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set of their new career, and should have attacked with calumnies those men whom 

 they could not reduce to submission by force* Whether or not the revolution of 

 the provinces of the river Plate be just, whether or not it be well meditated, and 

 will in the end be successful, are problems which I am neither able nor willing to 

 solve. Regarding it merely in a historical point of view, I shall proceed to speak 

 of the more recent events, and attempt to give the reader an idea of the state in 

 which those countries are at present, and of the manner in which they have 

 brought about the changes that are now observable among them. 



For this purpose, it is necessary to direct our consideration to the period anterior 

 to the establishment of the present Junta of government, and recur to the events 

 which took place among the people, subsequent to the invasion of the English. 

 The military exertions occasioned by that enterprise, awoke the spirit of the in- 

 habitants of the vice- royalty, and excited in them a degree of vigour and energy 

 of which they had never before been conscious. The royal authority exercised by 

 the viceroy, under whose government the country had been loft at the period of 

 Major-General Beresford's expedition, could not but sink into contempt before the 

 eyes of a people who had of themselves re-conquered the country, and had after- 

 wards successfully proved their valour against the English arms. A viceroy 

 incapable, if not pusillanimous, who had done nothing more than passively witness 

 the loss of two important places belonging to the Spanish crown in these territories, 

 and who, by his feeble measures, was bringing on other misfortunes, at the time 

 when Sir Samuel Achmuty had already occupied Monte- Video, was ignominiously 

 deposed by an extraordinary Junta of the people, who assembled in the Cabildo to 

 treat of measures fit to be adopted in circumstances so critical. I shall abstain 

 from giving an opinion on this signal proceeding of the people of Buenos Ayres, 

 which was doubtless no good augury for the interests of the metropolis, and I 

 know not whether, in respect to the illegality of the measure, the colonists ought 

 to have waited for the resolution of the cabinet of Madrid, on a point which, 

 although very urgent, was, in truth, delicate ; but certain it is, that had they not, 

 on this occasion, taken to themselves the privileges of the Sovereign, there was 

 much risk that his decisions, when they should arrive, might be dispensed with. 

 This deposal, by a natural consequence, gave the chair of the Viceroy Sobremonte 

 to the naval captain, Don Santiago Liniers, a French emigrant, who had headed 

 the military expedition which restored the place to the Spaniards on the 12th of 

 August 1 806, and who occupied the same rank when it was invaded by General 

 Whitelocke in 1 807. It may with truth be said, that accident alone effected the 

 elevation of this man ; devoid of morals, and a victim of dissipation and gaming. 



