its natural riches; and in Buenos Ayres, wheat was actually used to fill up the holes in the streets, and marshes in the vicinity of the town.[1] The inhabitants, whose only wealth consisted in their agricultural produce, were condemned to vegetate in hopeless indigence, debarred from all the advantages of civilization, and reduced to a state but little superior to that of the Indians, at the time of the conquest. I know of few more touching appeals to the feelings, and good sense of a government, than that addressed to the Viceroy of the provinces of the Rio de la Plata, in 1809, by the Apoderado (Agent) of the Landed Proprietors of Buenos Ayres. It contains an admirable exposé of the system, by which the interests, both of the Colonies and of the Royal Treasury, were sacrificed to those of a few overbearing European merchants; as well as of the fruitlessness of any endeavours to obtain redress, even in cases where the advantage of the government (if rightly understood) was perfectly in harmony with that of the colonist. I subjoin a few extracts, which will be found in the Appendix.
The reforms which had been gradually introduced into the Colonial System in Mexico, the Havanna, and Peru, did not extend, in the same degree, to these ill-fated countries. The precious metals were so exclusively the object of the attention of Spain, that but little attention was paid to
- ↑ Vide Representation of Landholders to Viceroy. Appendix, Letter A.
