BOOK II.
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
