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governor : a force of five hundred men, under General Belgrano, was sent by 

 the Junta in the month of October, 1810; but this interference was of little effi- 

 cacy, and the inhabitants persisted, without adhering to the new system, until 

 the intrigues and imprudent measures of their own chiefs obliged them to change 

 their sentiments. The Paraguayans seized Velasco, and sent him as a present to 

 the people of Buenos Ayres, in order to regain their friendship. 



I am too much alive to the disasters of humanity, to enter into the details of 

 the civil war and its attendant calamities, which continue to afflict these unhappy 

 provinces ; and it is horrible to reflect that, while in Europe, the blood of men 

 continues to be shed in torrents, America presents the sad spectacle of intestine 

 divisions, in which her citizens are destroying each other through a difference of 

 opinion concerning their own rights. The peninsula of Spain is strewn with the 

 bodies of her sons, who have sworn to die in avenging the wrongs of their King, 

 and in defending their liberty : these colonies, from one extremity to the other, 

 are burning with the most violent ardour, and are disputing among themselves on 

 the great question. Who is the representative of Ferdinand ; and what are the 

 prerogatives which belong to them, as part of the state ? There, the French are 

 the agents of injustice and desolation ; here despotism, selfishness, and ignorance^ 

 are tending to the same ends. Spaniards, if you wish that Providence should 

 favour the issue of your contest with the Oppressor of Europe ; if you wish that 

 the world should deem you capable of vindicating your rights, and securing them, 

 go not to the inoffensive plains of the Rio de la Plata to maintain that oppression 

 which in your own country you detest j pledge not yourselves, that the arbitrary 

 power and the tyranny of your kings, which you yourselves acknowledge, shall 

 prevail eternally in America ; employ not your strength in perpetuating those bar- 

 barous laws which were dictated in the ages of darkness and violence. As yours 

 were the arms which gave to the crown of Spain these immense possessions, let 

 not their inhabitants have to reproach you a second time with having enslaved 

 them. And you, Americans, contemplate the history of nations, and thence 

 learn how ye ought to conduct yourselves in the perilous crisis in which ye stand. 

 Look on those men, whom difference of opinion has caused you to regard as 

 enemies ; they are your own brethren, the loss of whom would be sensibly felt in agri- 

 culture, in arts, in your domestic economy : avoid shedding blood, which has 

 already begun to stain the pages of your history. I do not exhort you to rebellion, 

 but to be firm and wise in the assertion and establishment of your rights. 



