whose regeneration we have, thus, cooperated. We have dictated in Portugal, and have placed a British General over the armies of Spain; and we, there, conceive we have been fulfilling the sacred duties of a potent and faithful ally; in short, for all our political friends, in Europe, we have made the greatest sacrifices and exertions; for their welfare, freedom, and well-being, we have fought and struggled; yet, after the most solemn pledges and promises, are on record; after frequent and unsought protestations of sincere friendship and regard, unconditional, and unlimited by time, we hesitate, we are afraid, nay, we appear ashamed, of lifting up our hands, to ward off the blow of destruction from the heads of our transatlantic friends, those who have been the object of our long and reiterated offers. When, their unhappy country, has been, for more than four years, drenched in the blood of their fellow-citizens; and when murder and desolation, have, there, reared their ghastly heads, in every quarter, we can no longer find time, to pour the balm of comfort into the gaping wounds of these our new allies, as well as our ancient friends. When the subsequent abreviated detail of havoc and injustice, which have originated from the coldness of England, and the rash and precipitate conduct of the Cadiz Regency, meets the eye of a British minister, or the ear of a benevolent but uninformed public, the tear of sympathy cannot be withheld from the one, nor the glow of indignation from the other.

The cabinet of St. James, did not, however, content itself with entirely, abstaining from all interference in behalf of the outraged provinces of Spanish America, for by its public and official conduct, it negatively expressed

an approval of the conduct of the Regency, rather than testified a just and dignified interest, for the sufferings of Spanish America, or sympathy for the desolation that was about to ensue. Lord Liverpool, on 29th June, 1810, wrote to General Layard, governor of Curacoa, in the following terms: "that his Britannic Majesty has the greater motives for forming these hopes" (viz. that the inhabitants of Caracas will re-establish their bonds with Spain, which, as before shewn, were not broken, till a declaration of war, on the part of the latter, had taken place)" from the Regency established in Cadiz, having appeared to have adopted, with regard to the dominions of America, the same wise and generous principle, before adopted by the Supreme Junta, of establishing the relations between all parts of the Spanish monarchy, on the most liberal footing, by considering the provinces of America, as integral parts of the empire, and by admitting its inhabitants, to share in the Cortes of the whole kingdom. This letter, was communicated to the Cadiz government, and published in the gazette there, as a kind of confident support to the measures of the Regency. Governor Layard, was also authorised to make every public use thereof, and it was, consequently, transmitted to Caracas, and there inserted in the public papers.* What a contrast in the sentiments of this letter, written as a basis for the politica' conduct of England, with regard to American Spain, when compared with the documents E. and F. on which the preceding remarks have been made! What a variance between the opinion of Lords

* This letter of Lord Liverpool to Governor Layard, is found, entire, in El Espanol, No. 6.

Wellesley and Liverpool! One says, that promises, delusive, and unaccompanied by works, are all that the Central Junta, has done in favour of Spanish America; and, the other, as much as tells her inhabitants, that every thing has been done for them, consistent with justice and reason. The one gives a faithful picture of the degraded situation of the Peninsular government, and the other, enters into a panegyric on its liberal systems.

Lord Liverpool, when he penned the above dispatch, must have been unaware of the real situation of the ultramarine provinces; and urged by his anxious solicitude to preserve harmony with the Peninsula, and fearful of giving fresh motives of jealousy and distrust, he laid the blame of dissentions, which he foresaw and feared, to that quarter, where the primordial causes did not exist. The Spanish Americans, on the best grounds, might have asked the Noble Lord, when he thus condemned their conduct, what the government of Spain had done in their behalf; and at the period when he penned his dispatch, what proof he had to substantiate his assertions? They had been, long, living under a system, of which despotism was a fixed and fundamental principle; had this, then, ceased to exist? Could his Lordship then prove, that personal freedom, the impartial administration of justice, the increase and advancement of commerce and agriculture, reform in their mode of national education, in financial and military arrangements, in short, all that tends to perfect and secure national independence, had been granted to Spanish America? Were unfair restraints, no longer, imposed on the domestic economy of any orders of the state; and was the administration of justice, guided on principles, so as

to secure to every man, his personal freedom and property? Did local interests, no longer, palsy the plans of general government; and were the public laws founded on the true interests of the nation at large, and not of any individual class of inhabitants, or of any particular section? For three hundred years, the whole world had beheld Spanish America, governed by the arbitrary acts of military despots, from whose mandates there was no appeal; and, was this reign of terror, then, at an end? The prisons, had only been emptied of sufferers, where the energy of the people, had broken their own chains; and, were these victims to return to their solitude and misery, because the Spanish government had made verbal promises, in which the heart had no share? In short, if those restraints, of which the British government itself, had often complained, were not then removed; and, if the ultramarine provinces, had not been freed from all those vexations, which impede the course of justice, which oppress and damp genius and industry;* which subdue the spirit, which convert free and social beings, into abject and degraded vassals, and render their condition, that of dependant slaves; the notification of its being the wish and policy of England, for the sections of Spanish America, to re-establish their bonds with the mother-country, that is, again to invest their ex-viceroys and ex-captain-generals with their former powers, and to

* Can it be credited, that whilst the Spanish government ordered the tobacco to be plucked up in the sections of Spanish America, the king, as tobacconist-general, was paying to Portugal, annually, six hundred thousand dollars, for what was supplied him from the Brazils?

return, with full penitence and submission, under the control of the Cadiz Regency, the object which the latter exclusively sought, was no less than implicating the name of England, in the acts of the Spanish government, and upholding the grounds of its proceedings. If we had no balm, no consolation, to bestow on an injured and unoffending people, at least, we might have spared them the pang of being scoffed at in Cadiz, by this letter being there produced by the monopolists, as a kind of sanction to those measures, which they had induced the Regency to adopt; and which the liberal mind, could not fail to disapprove. Certainly, the sound judgment of Lord Liverpool, in this particular, must have slumbered; nor could these instructions ever have been intended, as a basis for that line of conduct, afterwards followed by the governor of Curacoa, in his relations with the unfortunate sufferers of Caracas, of which, notice will, hereafter, be taken.

§ The silence of the British government on the declaration of war against Caracas, together with other general traits of negative disapprobation, on its part, as well as on that of some of its officers; the disdain, with which the appeals of the Spanish Americans were treated, and the indifference, with which the fleets and armies of Spain, were seen to cross the Atlantic, for the exercise of revenge, and the spilling of more innocent blood, amounted, in the minds of a suffering people, to no less, than a positive approval of the conduct of Spain, and an actual condemnation of that of the Spanish Americans. Yet, would it not have been more salutary, for some mutual explanation to have taken place, under the guarantee of England; would it not have been better, that the provinces of Spanish America, had been enabled to