certain limitations, a free trade, during the suspension of the usual intercourse with the Mother country. This wise decree, the best possible antidote, (as the author of the "Espanol" very justly terms it,) against a revolutionary spirit in the Colonies, was protested against by the merchants of Cadiz, who found means to induce the Regency, very soon after its publication, to repeal it ; and the measure was carried into execution, with a violence as impolitic, as the resolution itself was imprudent. On the 27th of June, a second decree appeared, stating, that " Notwithstanding the lively wish of the Regency to conciliate the welfare of the Americas with that of the Mother country, it had abstained from touching upon a point of such delicacy and importance, that the least innovation with regard to it must be preceded by the repeal of the prohibitory laws of the Indies, which could not but be attended with the most serious consequences to the State :"
It therefore declared the decree of the 17th of May [1]" to be spurious, and of no value or effect," and directed " all existing copies of it to be burnt, and its authors to be proceeded against but assured the Colonists, at the same time, " that the Regency had not ceased to meditate, and was still meditating upon some mode of relieving the Americas, by other means, from the evils and privations under which they were suffering."[2]
This imprudent disavowal of a measure, by which one great cause of the dissatisfaction of the Creoles would have been removed — known, as it was, to have been forced upon the Government by the very men, whose interests it alone consulted — (the merchants of Cadiz,) naturally tended to convince the
