82 MEXICO. time, President of the Council of the Indies. This decree states, that in consequence of the many representations made to the King, respecting the bad effects produced by the col- lege for the education of noble Indians, at Lima, the sub- ject had been taken into serious consideration ; and that His Majesty, " convinced that, since the conquest, no Revolution had been attempted amongst the Peruvians, which had not originated with some one better informed than the rest," had determined that the question should be referred to the Vice- roy, with orders to give an opinion, as soon as possible, respecting the propriety of reforming, new-modelling, or entirely suppressing the said college." Upon the same principle, liberty to found a school of any kind was (latterly) almost invariably refused. The munici- pality of Buenos Ayres was told, in answer to a petition in favour of an establishment, in which nothing but mathematics was to be taught, that learning did not become Colonies.* The Padre Mier (author of a very curious work on the Mexi- can Revolution) enumerates various instances of a similar kind. In Bogota, the study of chemistry was prohibited, though permitted in Mexico : and in New Grenada, the works of the celebrated Mutis, though purely botanical, were not allowed to be published. Permission to visit foreign countries, or even the Peninsula, was very rarely granted, and then only for a limited time. A printing-press was con- ceded, as a special privilege, by the Council of the Indies, and that only to the three Viceroyalties, Mexico, Buenos Ayres, and Peru ; to Caracas, and many other considerable towns, it was denied altogether. To guard against the importation of books, was, as I be- fore observed, the special province of the Inquisition ; and the whole ingenuity of this odious tribunal was exerted, in order to check it. Not only were vessels subjected to a
- Vide Brackenbridge, Voyage to South America, by Order of the
Government of the United States.
