110 M l: X 1 c o. have delegated its authority ; and, in their despair at not being able to fix, at once, a balance of power, many would willingly have purchased tranquillity, by submitting again to that yoke, to which time had lent its sanction, and given respectability. I shall not, I hope, be accused by the friends of American Independence, of a wish to colour this part of the picture too highly ; but if I should be suspected of any such intention, a reference to the first acts of any of the new Juntas, will be sufficient to clear me from the imputation. It will be found, I believe, that, in almost every instance, they exercised the power with which they were entrusted, in the most wanton and oppressive manner.* Not only oppo- sition to their will, but hesitation in the adoption of their po- litical creeds (however exaggerated, or absurd,) was visited with the severest penalties.-]" Nor was it to their own terri- tory alone, that this spirit of proselytism was confined ; the instant that a Province, or State, had determined upon the principles to be adopted for its own guidance, it endeavoured to force these same principles upon its neighbours, and stamp- ed the least demur in conforming to them, as treason to the common cause. Sovereigns " by the grace of Adam and Eve," (as Blanco White somewhere says of the Cortes,) " they ought to have reflected upon the injustice of attempting to dictate to others, who, by the same undeniable title, were free as themselves :"
- See, as an instance, an order of the day published at Buenos Ayres
on the 6th December, 1810, by which a citizen who had, when drunk, given a toast, at a dinner, offensive to the President, was banished for life. f Vide a " Declaration of the Rights of the People," sanctioned by the Congress of Venezuela, 1st of July, 1811, followed by a law for regulating the liberty of the press ; by the nineteenth article of which, any one who should publish any political writing contrary to the system then esta- blished in Venezuela, was condemned to death: 25th July, 1811.
