by the violence and arrogance of this body matters were soon brought to a crisis. In every part of the country, a feeling of hostility towards the Europeans spread, and with it an impatient desire to shake off their yoke. In some places, (as at Valladolid,) attempts were made to concert insurrectionary movements, as early as May 1809, which were checked by the arrest of those principally concerned in the project. But nothing was gained by this; discontent had become too general to be repressed entirely, and to check it at one point, only gave it a tendency to break out, with additional violence, at another. The scene alone was changed from the province of Mīchŏăcān, to that of Guănăjūātŏ, where the famous Cura Hidalgo was destined first to rouse into action the excited feelings of his countrymen.
Don Miguel Hĭdālgŏ y Cŏstīllă, was a man whom the Spaniards themselves allow to have possessed many superior acquirements.[1] His reading was extensive, and in the little town of Dŏlōrĕs, of which he was Cura, he had given proofs of great activity and intelligence, by encouraging different manufac-
- ↑ Vide Appendix, 37th paragraph of the Representation of the Audiencia to the Cortes, in which Hidalgo, although designated as a "man without honour, or religious principle," is admitted to have possessed sufficient acuteness, and knowledge of mankind, to calculate, not only upon the assistance of the troops, whom he had seduced, but upon the powerful aid of the ambition, the vices, and the ignorance of his countrymen.
