struggle for those rights, which it was supposed to be incapable of appreciating; unless, indeed, we allow that there are, in nations as in individuals, particular periods, at which a general fermentation takes place throughout the system, rendering intolerable the pressure of some evil, which has been long, and patiently supported, and inspiring an irresistible longing for the attainment of some particular blessing, the importance of which has not been before so acutely felt.
Some great moral change of this description must have taken place in Mexico, at the commencement of 1810, to render so general that disposition to rise against the established order of things, which was displayed in every part of the country, the moment that the standard of insurrection was unfurled. Men unconnected with the capital, or with politics; landowners resident upon their estates in the most remote provinces; Curas, whose lives had been passed in the midst of their parishioners; and young men educated for the law, or the church, and just emerging from the university;—all flew to arms, and embarked at once in a contest, for which no one conceived them to be prepared. Nor were the feelings which led to this step, light, or evanescent, in their nature. The war was carried on for years under most unfavourable circumstances, by the Insurgents, with a spirit that set all attempts to reduce them at defiance; and we shall see one of the most distinguished supporters of the cause of Spain (the
