The improvements should have been greater, but the policy of Spain was short-sighted and selfish, despite the benevolent motives often impelling it. That policy was aggravated by the rule of appointing to nearly all positions of control officials born in the Peninsula, whose inclination leaned too strongly toward the mother country and against the colony, at least where their interests clashed. They managed moreover to set aside or thwart many a humane and progressive measure, and to subordinate the interests of the crown and the people to their own dishonest aims.
Official integrity was not a prominent virtue, as we have seen, even among the viceroys; yet the latter must on the whole be classed as men of fair character and ability. Several shine brightly for their wise and philanthropic administration, and many more would no doubt have attained a similar record but for their duty to carry out the mandates of the home government, swayed too frequently by an impoverished treasury. The aim was to make the American possessions subservient in every respect to the will of Spain, although these efforts proved in the main disastrous, as I shall have occasion to show in a later volume. This aim went so far as to cause a rigid isolation of the colonies from foreign intercourse, attended by suppression of information about them which evoked wide-spread comments among writers on the New World. Such policy could not fail to meet objections within the countries concerned, though it might not have created any decided ill-feeling but for the jealous reservation of officers which touched a weak spot among the creoles, ever eager for position and honor, and drove them to sympathize and seek common cause with the disturbing elements to be expected among a mixture of races, with antagonistic interests and feelings, especially against the dominant classes. It is the maturing and coalescing of these elements, and the mighty convulsions which ensue, that will form the subject of my next volume.
