310 



sessions it would have been requisite to form 

 six or seven centres of government, and that 

 multiplicity of centres, (vice-royalties and 

 captaincies-general), was hostile to the esta- 

 blishment of new dynasties at the period when 

 they might still have produced some salutary 

 effect for the mother country. 



Bacon # has said, in his Political Aphorisms, 

 that " it would be happy if nations would always 

 follow the example of time, the greatest of all 

 innovators, but who acts calmly, and almost 

 without being perceived." This happiness does 

 not belong to colonies when they reach the cri- 

 tical period of their emancipation ; and least of 

 all to Spanish America, engaged in the struggle 

 at first, not to obtain its complete independence, 

 but to escape from a foreign yoke. May the 

 agitations of party be succeeded by a double 

 calm ! May the germ of civil discord, dissemi- 

 nated during three centuries to secure the do- 

 minion of the mother country, be stifled by 

 degrees ; and productive and commercial Eu- 

 rope become more persuaded, that to perpetu- 

 ate the political agitations of the New World 

 would be to impoverish itself, in diminishing 

 the consumption of its productions, and de- 

 priving itself of a market which already amounts 



* See the article of Innovations, in Bacon's Essays civil and 

 moral, No. 25. (Opera omnia, 1730, vol. iii, p. 335.) 



