BOOK II.
SECTION I.
EFFECTS PRODUCED BY THE EVENTS OF THE YEAR 1808 IN THE PENINSULA.
I have endeavoured to give, in the preceding section, a fair and dispassionate view of the system by which the possessions of Spain in the New World were governed, during a period of three centuries. It was not in the nature of things that such a system should be endured any longer than the power to enforce it was retained. There was little mutual affection, and no reciprocity of advantages; so that the question of right, between the Mother country and the Colonies, became, in fact, a question of might; and resistance, on the part. of the Creoles, the almost inevitable consequence of a consciousness of strength. It is uncertain, however, how long a disposition to assert their rights might have been cherished by the more enlightened, without being sufficiently generalized to admit of its being declared, had not the events of the year 1808 favoured its developement.
The history of Europe, (and more particularly of the Pe-
