Could it ever have been thought, that the nineteenth century would have witnessed such a commission, given by an individual known only by his crimes, to a captain placing himself at the head of a band of armed negroes? The traitors, herein alluded to, are the Creoles, the owners of their country, and the objects of Spanish vengeance from the time of its discovery. The holy cause, is pretty well depicted in the description of Monteverde's entry into Caracas, and as may be collected from the contents of the preceding pages. It amounts to a furious and bloody despotism, trampling on every right, and sporting with human life. I leave my reader to judge of the consequences, of a captain commanding a black band, just freed from slavery, by the incentives of plunder and licentiousness, being empowered over the lives of individuals, scattered over a wide and defenceless country, thus leaving them at his mercy, and their property at his will. Some of these results, are also depicted in Document I. But this is not all. As a refinement of cruelty, those who escape the murdering steel of this black banditti, have their ears or noses cut off, or are marked with the letter F (for Ferdinand) on their faces, in the same manner, as they brand cattle, or as the Dutch brand their slaves at Surinam, on the arm. What monsters, have not been generated, from this unnatural contention!

*

And does not this remind us of the horrors of the tomahawk and scalping-knife, which once covered the western frontiers of the United States, with so many

* Letter from a respectable commercial house, dated St. Pierre, Martinique, Jan. 30th, 1814; and confirmed through many other channels.

horrors? Does it not also call to our recollection, the speech made by the venerable Earl Chatham, when Lord} Suffolk, then Secretary of State, contended in the House of Peers, for the employment of Indians in the war. "Besides its policy and necessity," his Lordship said, "that the measure was, also, allowable on principle, for that it was perfectly justifiable, to use all the means that God and nature had put into our hands."

My

The indignation of Lord Chatham was moved, and he suddenly rose and gave full vent to his feelings, in one of the most extraordinary bursts of eloquence, the pen of history ever recorded." I am astonished," exclaimed his Lordship," shocked to hear such principles confessed; to hear them avowed in this house, or even in this country. My lords, I did not intend to have encroached again on your attention, but I cannot repress my indignation. I feel myself impelled to speak. lords, we are called upon, as members of this house, as men, as Christians, to protest against such horrible barbarity. That God and nature had put into our hands! What ideas of God's nature, that noble Lord may entertain, I know not; but I know, that such detestable principles, are equally abhorrent to religion and humanity. What, to attribute the sacred sanction of God and nature, to the massacres of the Indian scalping-knife! to the cannibal savage, torturing, murdering, devouring, drinking the blood of his mangled victims! Such notions, shock every precept of morality, every feeling of humanity, every sentiment of honour. These abominable principles, and this more abominable avowal of them, demand the most decisive indignation. I call upon the right reverend, and this most learned bench, to vindicate the re

ligion of their God, to support the justice of their country. I call upon the bishops, to interpose the unsullied sanctity of their lawn, upon the judges, to interpose the purity of their ermine, to save us from this pollution. I call upon the honour of your Lordships, to reverence the dignity of your ancestors, and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country, to vindicate the national character. I invoke the genius of the constitution. From the tapestry that adorns these walls, the immortal ancestor of this noble Lord, frowns with indignation, at the disgrace of his country. In vain, did he defend the liberty, and establish the religion of Britain against the tyranny of Rome, if these worse than Popish cruelties and inquisitorial practices, are endured amongst us. To send forth the merciless cannibal, thirsting for blood! And against whom? Your Protestant brethren; to lay waste their country; to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name, by the aid and instrumentality of these horrible hell-hounds of war! Spain, armed herself with blood-hounds, to extirpate the wretched natives of Mexico, but we, more ruthless, loose these dogs of war against our countrymen in America, endeared to us by every tie that should sanctify humanity. My Lords, I solemnly call upon your Lordships, and upon every order of men in the State, to stamp upon this infamous procedure, the indelible stigma of public abhorrence. More particularly, I call upon the holy prelates of our religion, to do away this iniquity; let them perform a lustration to purify their country, from this deep and deadly sin. My Lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more; but my feelings and indignation, were too strong, to have

said less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor reposed my head upon my pillow, without giving this vent to my eternal abhorrence of such enormous and preposterous principles."

And will not the feelings of every Briton, who sees the recital of these horrors, correspond with the above words of Lord Chatham? Nay, will not the true Spaniard, equally revolt, on beholding such scenes, and in listening to the enumeration of horrors, which the pen refuses to trace? Not horrors, inseperable from a state of warfare, but enormities, which nothing but wickedness could invent, or barbarity execute. Enormities, not only committed, but afterwards boasted of. Spanish America, even by the confession of Spanish writers, during its conquest, was the grand repository of plunder, and a monument of ever living crimes. Three centuries afterwards, their recital makes us shudder, and we scarcely believe man could be so degraded. Yet, greater enor mities are now committing, and we are still silent. I say greater, because this contest, is between Christians and fellow-citizens. By the general conventions of mankind, the afflictions of war are softened and relieved, but, here they are aggravated by every thing infernal, which the malice of the heart, can suggest. Alas! and for what is not the Spanish government answerable in the conduct of its agents? Do these ever remember, that when they gain a victory, their banners are crimsoned with the blood of fellow-citizens; and that it is the duty of mo rality, as well as of religion, to diminish the calamities of war? When the prisoners on both sides, are respect. ively murdered in cold blood, when a war of extermination is thus provoked, when the slaves of a country are

armed for the murder and plunder of their masters, and when besides these outrages, the human invention is racked to find out new and additional torture, what are the consequences that may not be expected? Can we look for less, than to behold that country a heap of ruins, which is still bound to us by a treaty of alliance, and which we have deluded by our former promises? And what can Spain say to these her agents, who have been the causes of all these horrors, ravages, and disasters ? Can she expect, that no dreadful punishment will follow at the heels of such offenders; or can she suppose, that the tide of war and vengeance, will not be rolled back upon them, with aggravations, like those of which they have been the inventors.

§ Mexico and Caracas, however, are not the only sections of Spanish America, that have witnessed scenes, such as those, of which an outline has just been given. The march of Goyeneche into Upper Peru, has been attended with similar instances of cruelty and vengeance, though on a smaller scale. In Cochabamba, upwards of a hundred persons were murdered in cold blood, some with tortures, and one was quartered. La Paz, Potosi, and Oruro, had to weep over excesses equally great. Their crime, also, was common with the rest of the inhabitants of the insurgent provinces; that is, it consisted in a resolve to seek within themselves, that redress, which was denied them at home. The stages, through which the contest in Buenos Ayres and Chili, has gone, being more generally known amongst us, they are passed over for the sake of brevity. On the 2d August, 1810, forty persons of the first families, were destroyed in cold blood in the prisons of Quito, by the dissolute soldiery of