ment, and had no good model to follow:[1] it is not surprising, therefore, that they should have engrafted upon the stern despotism under which they were brought up, the wildest theories of the French school, nor that their ardour, in the cause of liberty, should have cooled, amidst the many evils which these theories brought upon them.[2] They soon learnt that tyranny was not, as they had fondly supposed, an heir loom in the family of the Kings of Spain, but might be exercised, just as effectually, in the name of the Sovereign people, by any man, or set of men, to whom that people was supposed to have delegated its authority; and, in their despair at not being able to fix, at once, a balance of power, many would almost have purchased tranquillity, by submitting again to that yoke, to which time had lent its sanction, and given respectability.
- ↑ Spain was their only model, and to her most of their errors may be traced. The want of fixed principles, the preference of theory to practice, the dilatory habits of those in power at one time, and their ill-judged strides towards impracticable reforms at another,—all are of the modern Spanish school, as are the bombastical addresses to the people, the turgid style which disfigures most of the public documents of the Revolution, the intolerance, and jealousy of strangers, which are only now beginning to subside.
- ↑ It is melancholy to reflect how soon the Americans were initiated in all the cant of Revolutions, and taught to distrust the bewitching terms of patriotism and public felicity, under the sanction of which they found themselves a prey to private ambition, anarchy, and distress.
