THE AMERICAN WHIG REVIEW, No. XXXIV. FOR OCTOBER, 1850. THE SPANISH AMERICAN REPUBLICS, AND THE CAUSES OF THEIR FAILURE. CENTRAL AMERICA. own THE Spanish American Republics, since their independence, have exhibited a spectacle full of sorrow to the friends of free institutions throughout the world. Their general history has been one of anarchy and blood, with scarcely a page from which we do not turn in horror and disgust. The partisan struggles which, in our country come and go like a summer storm, agitating the public mind for an instant, but leaving it all the quieter when past, have been marked in these Republics by a spirit of fierce intolerance, which can only be born of the deadliest antagonism, and of which few among us can form any adequate conception. The first effort of a triumphant party is not only to crush but exterminate its opponent; and it hesitates not in adopting the extreme measures of confiscation, exile, and death, in the attainment of its objects. So long as it wields the power, it is absolute, tyrannical, despotic. He who entertains principles or opinions counter to the dominant faction, must guard his words and actions, under peril to property and life. The consequences are plain and inevitable; hate, distrust, intrigue, revolution. The gall which flows in harmless, inky torrents through an untrammelled press, VOL. VI. NO. IV. NEW SERIES. and the energy which exhausts itself on the stump, or dies away in idle reverberations in the domes of our legislative halls, here rankles in the heart of the man who feels himself the victim of proscription and oppression, and nerves him for deeds which would chill the blood of our bitterest partisan, after the depletion of a newspaper article or an hour's harangue; and the skill in combination and arrangement, which with us is devoted to no worse purpose than that of packing conventions, dictating the decrees of a caucus, and canvassing a city, finds scope and verge enough in deeplaid, perilous plots against the existing order of things for whatever the tendency of that order, it wears the garb of wrong. This intolerance precludes the existence of parties, as we understand them,-the safe-guards of every free commonwealth, and necessary to its healthful existence. Precluded from a free expression of opin-. ons, and shut off from legitimate action, every opposition is driven to move in secret conclave, and its measures bear the form. if they do not conceal the spirit of treason. Discovery is persecution, perhaps death and scarce a possibility of relief or change is offered, except through that last and most dangerous resort, Revolution. It is easy to conceive how a system o 22 detestable espionage on one hand, and a scarcely less detestable system of intrigue on the other, would spring up under such a condition of things. The man of the opposition, however laudable his objects or pure his motives, is of necessity a conspirator; and every conspirator, is by equal necessity, a prey to suspicion, which, in its turn, where the perils are so great, under some real or fancied necessity, leads to treachery, and entails a long series of bloody revenges. The disastrous results of these conditions, are not only felt in the general political system, but in every part of the social and civil body. Law, that sacred intangibility, which next to God, merits and should receive the respect and obedince of men, here loses its divinity, and confounded with the tyranny and the worst passions and impulses of the men who should be its impartial ministers, but who wield its terrors for the vilest of purposes, is despised and contemned. That religious deference from which it derives its majesty and force, and without which it degenerates into a pretext, is utterly destroyed; and society is resolved into a chaos of conflicting elements, where might lords it over right, where life nor property is safe, and where neither honor, virtue nor wisdom can long survive. impulses to colonization or this continent, we seek in vain for any, of that exalted character which brought our fathers hither. Among all the adventurers who flocked here, our ancestors alone had practically solved the grand problems of civil and religious freedom. Very different was the advent of the little band of self-relying, earnest men, despising and despised of kings, who silently sought a refuge in America, relying on their own right arms and their God for support, -and that of the steel-cased cavaliers, the pride and flower of Spain, impelled by ambition and avarice, sustained by the the proudest monarch of the world, enjoying the full sunshine of royal favor, followed and cheered on by the enthusiasts of a proselyting faith, inflamed by the wildest dreams of conquest, and striking for the dominion of the world! On the one hand the world saw, taking deeper and wider root, a people jealous of their rights, securing every possible conces sion in their charters, resisting every encroachment on their privileges, and religiously excluding from their midst the aristocratic forms of the old world, becoming daily more self-relying and distinct, and more imbued with the spirit, and familiar with the forms, of self-government. The blessings and privileges of freedom came to them, as the reward of long, unwearying, enlightened endeavor; when attained, like the slowly accumulated competence of the laborer, they knew how to value and how to use them. Our revolution was the consummation of centuries of well-directed, It will, no doubt, be conceded, indeed it is evident, that the demoralization of the Spanish American Republics, is the proximate cause of the intolerance which we have pointed out. But whence has this demoralization resulted? The Spanish character is not deficient in the nobler at-rational effort for freedom. tributes of humanity; the Spanish people are not less susceptible to lofty impulses than our own, and are perhaps more theoretically, if less practically comprehensive, than we There is not in their individual nor in their collective character anything which renders them incapable of exercising the rights, or enjoying rationally the benefits, of self-government. And those of our people who complacently ascribe the general failure of the Spanish Republics, to a radical, psychological defect of the Spanish race, commit a grievous but a very natural error. With the exception of Chili, all of them have been, thus far, undoubted fail are. ures. But it should be remembered, that the origin of these Republics was widely different from that of our own. Among all the 7 In Spanish America, on the other hand, amidst the magnificence of the tropics, and the fragments of aboriginal greatness, were diffused a people, reflecting alike the splendors and the corruptions of a powerful court and of an arrogant aristocracy. The highest incentives to action were the favors of artificial and hereditary greatness, or the accumulation, by whatsoever means, of that wealth by which those favors might be purchased. The fame of those whose names fill the earlier pages of the history of this people, is that of conquerors alone. They encountered unprecedented dangers, displayed an energy unparalleled in human achievement, overturned empires, and trod with bloody steps over more than half a continent. Yet it was for the aggrandize ment of the crown of Castile and Leon, American colonies, it is obvious, such an advance was impossible. They did not even keep pace with the meliorations and improvements, which the lapse of time was slowly but surely bringing about in Europe, and which even Spain herself could not resist. These colonies were borne down and restrained, not only by the weight of an irresponsible local government, imperial except in name; but by that of a decaying and exacting empire on another continent, which forced the life's blood from their veins to sustain its own languid existence, a double curse, which those colonies most deeply felt, but which they knew not how to remedy. The sense of wrong was keen amongst their people, but their ideas of redress were vague and indefinite; rather the offspring of the instincts of selfpreservation and revenge, than the suggestions of reason and experience. In due course of events, by a series of regular progressions, came on our Own revolution,-a struggle for objects clearly defined and well understood. It was successful, and the proximate cause of that great civil and moral convulsion, which burst the ligatures that priesteraft and re-kingcraft had been binding, fold on fold, for a thousand years, on the passive limbs of Europe, and which we call the French Revolution. Events like these, in spite of viceroys, and edicts of suppression, and the whole machinery of despotism, could not be kept unknown to the world. The Indian brooding over his wrongs in the deep valleys of the Andes, or delving in mines of El Paso in Peru; the Creole on the narrow slopes of Chili, or the higher plains of Mexico, and around the volcanos and broad lakes of Central America, heard the distant tread of revolutions, and his heart leapt, his eye kindled, and his muscles tightened as he heard. The leaven sank deep in the Spanish American Colonies, and thoughts of change, and high aspirations for the future, too often blackened by envy and hate, and not always unmingled with the wild longfor retribution and revenge, thenceforth filled the minds of their people.Continental Spain early felt the shock of the Revolution in France; hoary with. abuses, and blackened with corruption, yet glorious in recollections, the crumbling fabric of her greatness fell, never to arise Under this order of things, nothing beyond a very qualified advance, on the part of the people, was possible. And this advance, such as it was, took place in spite of the obstacles which this very order of things interposed. But it was not sufficiently great to lead to a comprehension of what constituted the primary and essential elements of civil freedom. Truly Republican Institutions are the loftiest develop-ings ments of human wisdom; and their existence presupposes, not only a general diffusion of, but high attainment in knowledge, amongst the people at large. Their permanence depends upon the general intelligence and morality. In the Spanish again. Her mission of conquest and pro- | la Ley," Equality before the Law, boldly pogandism was ended, and all that promulgated. They feared the spread of was, or is, or will be left of her, is her the spirit of liberalism which had worked Great Past! Yet in her fall, the colonies, these marvelous changes at home. Nor like the ivy around the old tower which the were their fears unfounded. In spite of earthquake has prostrated, still clung to distance, in spite of ages of depression, the ruins. The power of the viceroya was although ignorance and superstition held fresh and strong, while that of the King almost absolute sway in the Spanish colowas weak. They still cherished their nies, rays of the new light reached Ameallegiance for the throne of Ferdinand and rica, and men were found who began to Isabella, although profaned by a Bona- talk boldly of human rights, and to hint at parte, and surrounded by foreign bayonets; their future recognition. The voice of and exhibited to the world the singular Freedom, grateful to the rudest ear, had its spectacle of an empire vigorous at the ex- thousands of listeners. It fell upon the tremities while dead at the heart. There depressed people like strains of music upon was something admirable in the devotion the savage, in a whirl of exciting and with which they clung to their traditions. pleasurable emotions. Vague hopes of an Even the colonists themselves forgot unknown future, shone out upon the clouds for a moment their grievances and wrongs which enveloped the present. The more in recollection of their past glories and enlightened enthusiasts dreamed of a greatness, and in contemplation of the land Utopia about to be realized; the Creole, of of their fathers, the dominions of the Great a new order of things, in which he should Charles, prostrate and powerless at the stand equal with the highest; the Indian of feet of France. Spain, harsh, exacting, the return of those traditional glorious days, cruel, was still their mother country; and so when the democracy of Tlascalla, like that far as patrotism consists in simple love of of Sparta, had its simple but severe laws, country, the Spaniard and his descendant is wisely adapted to its own wants and condialways a patriot. The Creole girl, though tion, and when their fathers wore no hated centuries intervene, and her ancestral blood foreign yoke; but few, if any, entertained has been fed from a hundred diverse springs, any clear idea of what constituted true Restill cherishes with pride the lute like publicanism, or comprehended the process liquid pronunciation of her Andalusian by which its enjoyment might be attained ancestors; or in indignant reply to an un- and secured. The best, not to say the acceptable proposal, with the brow of a wisest among them, like the revolutionists Catherine, and the lip of a queen, ejacu- of France, fell into the error of supposing lates, Soy una Catalina !" I am a that a people weary of tyranny, and enthu Cataline girl! siastic for freedom, were of necessity able to comprehend its requirements, and fulfil its conditions, while they enjoyed its latitudes. Republics are of slow growth; they are, to a certain extent, the results of that high development of humanity which they are, in turn, adapted to perfect. While then the more abstract truths of Republicanism were promulgated with eloquence and force, the means for the attainment of rational freedom were lost sight of, or but imperfectly recognized. Separation from Spain was the first grand practical object kept in view; this accomplished, it was deemed all else would follow. With the restoration in Spain, the feeling of patriotic sympathy among the Spanish colonists died away, and they felt, in the still unrelenting rule of the viceroys, that the reforms which that restoration had brought about in Europe, were not for them. The viceroys, on the other hand, with the colonial aristocracy, and the priesthood themselves, in their almost unlimited power and great wealth, constituting a most formidably ecclesiastical oligarchy, saw with alarm the progress of these very reforms. The representative principle had been introduced in Spain; the power of the monarch, hitherto practically absolute, had been limited; the aristocracy reformed; the clergy shorn of its undue privileges; primogeniture abolished; and the great principle of "Igualidad ante It has been a subject of remark, with many perhaps of suspense, that the dismemberment of the Spanish empire, and the independence of its American colonies, were so easily accomplished. That it was, in great |