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he probably hoped to recover his lost authority. For this purpose, don Pedro Aldunate, the brother of the governor of Chiloe, was despatched from Callao, with a commission from O'Higgins, to excite the garrison of Chiloe to insurrection. Aldunate arrived in Chiloe on the night between the 24th and 25th of April; and, though he found his brother ab{sent, he met with no difficulty in executing his task. Fuentes, the officer in command, joined readily in the plot : and, on the 3rd of May, the troops threw off their allegiance, and declared for O'Higgins. Emissaries were sent, at the same time, to seduce the troops in other districts, and to excite disturbances in Santiago, Conception, and Coquimbo. A sort of assembly was immediately convoked at ¡Chiloe, under the auspices of the military authorities, which declared the province to be henceforth free, and independent of Chili, until a government, legally constituted by the people, should be formed, retaining in the mean time the constitution of Chili.

to That Bolivar was one of the contrivers of this insurrection, could scarcely be doubted. It was from Lima, that the emissaries of rebellion were sent. O'Higgins was actually with Bolivar and the liberator had long been anxious to extend the influence of his arms Beyond Peru. He had offered in the preceding year to assist the Chilians in the reduction of Chiloe; but they dreaded the proffered aid, and declined it. He was eager, too, to march some thousands of troops to co-operate with the provinces of the Rio de la Plata; but the authorities of Buenos Ayres >were too suspicious of his intenVOL. LXVIII.

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tions, to avail themselves of his kindness. If he had that share in this transaction, which every thing seemed to prove, it was a most inauspicious omen for the future tranquillity of South America. It indicated a spirit-if not of military usurpation at least, of, ambitious and unnecessary interference, and that, too, by exciting insurrection, which might lead to a succession of revolutions in countries, whose prosperity and happiness depended entirely on the permanence and stability even of the imperfect governments which they possessed.

But, in fact, Chili could scarcely be said to possess a government; the administration was a matter of cabal to a faction of great proprietors mingled with some lawyers; the people at large took no share in it, and had little or no influence on its course. In October, 1825, the deputies of Santiago, the capital, had usurped to themselves the functions of the general congress of the republic. Thereupon their constituents, in a tumultuary assembly, recalled their commissions, the Supreme Director) dissolved them, and banished from the territories of the confederation eleven of the most noisy, who insisted on his recognising them. As the directorship of Freire was about to expire, and there was no constitutional mode of re-electing him, or choosing a successor, without a National Assembly, anew Congress was convoked in July. Don Manuel Blanco Encaladawas chosen Supreme Director; the Congress resolved" that the republic should be consolidated under the Federal system;" and, so soon as the acclamations attendant on these empty words had died away, they proceeded to tear the

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struction. Some other individual, more fortunate than he who addresses you, or more experienced in the science of making something out of nothing, may succeed one whose unhappy fate it has been to struggle with insuperable difficulties: at one time to oppose dangerous innovations at another to discountenance the most absurd and inexplicable theories-now to foil the intrigues of party-now to calm the ardour of passions neither elevated nor generous."

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confederation in pieces by dissention, and leave the government paralysed by poverty. In two months the Supreme Director Encalada, very wisely, gave in his resignation, and nothing could present a more melancholy picture of a state than what was contained in his reasons for adopting this step. "He had hoped," he said, "that Congress, sensibly alive to the critical position of affairs, and the exhausted state of the treasury, would lend their active co-operation, and unite in perfect harmony with the executive, for the purpose of calling into action those indispensable resources that were so imperiously necessary for meeting the urgent and daily necessities of the State, and which have been a source of unceasing perplexity to the government, from the first moment of its installation. What has been the state of the public treasury, from that period to this, will sufficiently appear from the repeated representations made by the executive to Congress. It is, therefore, quite nugatory again to allude to the lamentable appearance it presents, and which has been already submitted to the consideration of the representatives, without ever producing the effects that might reasonably be expected, and which were equally demanded by necessity, reason, and sound policy." He further stated plainly," The cause that has induced me to adopt the resolution of tendering my resignation is the alienation and neglect manifested by all parties towards the executive power, which has been left to the mercy of the attacks of public opinion, without aid or hope, to steer its course amidst a thousand hidden rocks, which must ultimately be its detained the monopoly in its own

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There was now no occasion for any South-American power to blush because it did not pay its debts; they kept each other in countenance; and, least of all, was any great sensitiveness to be expected from a legislature, which, in such matters, would listen neither to "reason, necessity, nor sound policy." The Chilian bondholders in London remained unpaid, like those who had trusted to Colombia and Peru. Chilian government had pretended to make provision for the regular discharge of the interest of its debt, but the mode adopted was not a little singular. It conveyed to a mercantile company the monopoly of certain articles of general consumption; and the company, in return for that monopoly, was to provide for the discharge of the accruing interest of the foreign debt. Though such a monopoly might have been maintained under the Spanish system of administration, it is easy to see that, as it must necessarily be exceedingly unpopular, it could not but be insecure under a new, tottering, inexperienced, half-oligarchical, and half-democratical, government. Had the state re

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hands, it would even then have been the object of general odium; but when the monopoly was as signed to a company of merchants, was it to be expected that the people would submit patiently to deprivations imposed on them, apparently for the benefit of a few speculators? The company, thinking that they had not made a very secure bargain, announced that they would not provide for the interest of the debt, unless a large extension of their exclusive privilege were granted. This extension the government dared not venture to concede; and the consequence was, that the public creditor had to remain unsatisfied. The executive could not bring the revenue to a level even with the ordinary expenditure, although it had sold its fleet to Buenos Ayres to raise a sum for its present necessities.

Thus throughout the South American States there was little that was promising, except the final removal of the debasing despotism and ecclesiastical degradation of Spain; every where reigned disunion and uncertainty, theoretical symmetry, and practical confusion. In none of them could any man feel the least confidence that what existed to-day would exist to-morrow; faction and intrigue were every moment attempting or accomplishing innovations; the spirit of change was so busy, and found so much facility in gratifying itself, that nothing was regarded as perma nent or fixed; and this uncer tainty and variableness not only weakened the administrations, but arrested the career of improves ment, and quenched the spirit of private enterprise and industry.

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They were now safe from external assault, until they should quarrel with each other; but their governments were devoid of that con sistency and stability which exclude sudden and capricious changes in fundamental details, and at the same time admit improvement by gradual modification, and by accommodation to varying circumstances. Yet, while each had so much with which to occupy itself at home, they assembled a pompous and futile Amphyctionic council, to deliberate on the welfare of the whole American continent. The deputies to this grand Diet of the New States assembled at Panama in the month of June. Only four of the states-Colombia, which had borne the principal share in its convocation-Mexico-Peru, which was governed by the Colombian president and Guatemala, whose provinces were at war with each other-sent representatives. The provinces of the Rio Plata regarded the assembly with more of aversion and suspicion than of confidence, from their jealousy of the influence and designs of Colombia. Similar feelings were entertained by Chili, heightened by the insurrection effected in Chiloe by the military adherents of Bolivar's friend, O'Higgins. The baby Bolivia, fondled in the bosom of the Colombian president, was represented wherever he had a minister.

To preserve a fantastic equality, the lot decided the presidency as well as the order in which the deputies of the different states should sign the acts of the diet. Don Manuel Lorenzo de Vidaurre, one of the ministers of Peru, happened to be chosen [2 E 2]

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president, and addressed to the assembly, as the opening of vits deliberations, a matchless effusion of pedantry vand bombast. Set ting-out from such profound axioms as these, "that man, in the use of his most perfect facul ties, distinguishes what is just from what is unjust; what is useful and agreeable from what is pernicious and offensive; what is secure from what is dangerous; the enjoyment of moderate plea sures, which are perpetual, from intense gratifications, which are only momentary; her assured them, yas if to encourage them to sets experience at defiance, that their revolutions found no example in all the revolutions, civil, moral, and political, which historians have related, or philosophers examined. He then treated of the creation of the world, the dynasties of the Chinese and Egyptians, the empires of the Medes and Persians, the Greeks and Romans, Marathon, Salamis, Thebes, and Carthage; Emilianus, O'Higgins, Pitt and Fox; and various other topics equally fit for a deliberative assembly, with a zeal and copiousness betraying not merely bad taste, but poverty and barrenness of mind, want of experience, ignorance of all that is worth knowing, and an absence of the habits of thought which are required in active life. This has hitherto been the bane of the South American statesmen. They speak and they write like boys who have just left school, as if their minds had been stationary since they attained the age of puberty: they exhibit scarcely a single trace of a reason accustomed to observe human affairs, to analyze their combinations, or

follow their consequences.com For this defective turn of mind they were hardly responsible; the sys tems of education, and the frame of society, which existed in the Spanish colonies, were such as scarcely to permit statesman-like. habits of thought to grow up. ot

The political objects of the Diet, so far as they could be gleaned from amid a mass of vague and declamatory propositions, were founded on inveterate hostility to Spain, and good will towards all the rest of the world, and to each other. It professed to treat with respect the established European governments, however opposite in their principles to those of America; to seek free commerce with all nations, and grant great commercial privileges to such as recognized its independence; to establish rer ligious toleration," and abolish slavery. To convince Spain that her hopes of re-conquest, if she still entertained them, were chimerical, the war establishment was still to be maintained; her fruits, her commodities, every production of her industry and soil, were to be absolutely prohibited, seized, and destroyed wherever they might be found, till Ferdinand, persuaded that he could not recover what he had been unable to maintain, and convinced that in America even faction would lend him no assistance, should become accessible to reason and justice, and recognize as a right the independence which they would never condescend to purchase. Then America would forget all the calamities which he had caused her, and allow him the benefit of "the generous reconciliation which she proffered

to him." It was impossible to condemn either the spirit or the prudence which recommended obstinate resistance to Spain, and even active war. In relation to the American States themselves, the grand Congress was to act in four characters. It was to be "an adviser in great conflicts—a faithful interpreter of treaties-a mediator in domestic disputes an agent in the formation of new rights with foreign states." There could be no objection to its giving advice, though that advice had little chance of being much regarded: it might interpret and mediate as much as it pleased, though it was an awkward circumstance that the contending parties should themselves be integral parts of the interpreter or mediator; but as to "its agency in the formations of new rights with foreign states," it was to be exbalt nang Joí!!7103 0

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pected that foreign states would be very cautious in negotiating with such an assembly, or through its agency. When they dealt with Colombia or Mexico, they were dealing with a supreme state; if they dealt with a body like this great Diet, they were dealing with a shadow. After concluding ant ordinary treaty of perpetual alli ance and friendship among the four republics, the Congress rose, apparently alarmed by the un healthy climate of the isthmus, which had proved fatal to some of the functionaries attending its proceedings; but, as many, sust pected, in consequence of the apprehended intrigues of Bolivar, to whose schemes it seemed inclined. to be less subservient than he desired. desired. The members agreed to hold another meeting at Mexico, or in its neighbourhood.ors di

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