Page:Civilization and barbarism (1868).djvu/28

selves for their country, as many other classes did, purely from a sentiment of patriotism, and nothing more. During the first ten years of the revolution, when the existence of the Federal and Unitario parties was an old story, the rural districts of most of the provinces, and that of Buenos Ayres particularly, were indifferent and even strangers to those questions and those parties. That multitude of changes in the government which took place in the cities in favor of one or the other party, were of no importance or interest in the campagna. It was not till 1815 that it was called upon to give its opinion, conjointly with that of the city, not only upon the validity of a government, but even upon the proposed reform of a provisory State, which was never realized. The rural districts never made a movement which revealed political ideas and they never misunderstood any government. It is true that the gauchos, a peculiar race of men that is seen in the pampas, and holds a middle place between the European and the aboriginal inhabitant, followed certain partisans of that epoch, but it was because those partisans were the immediate authority which they recognized; they followed them from personal affection and from the habit of obedience, but from no political conviction, nor from any desire to make any system prevail for their interest as a class. The chieftainship (caudillage) did not ap-