POLITICAL STATE. 5 terests of their several component parts have shown to be requisite for their due protection and development. Nothing has tended more to retard the organization and improvement of their political institutions than this necessity; and nowhere has it been more strikingly exemplified than in the widelyspread provinces of La Plata. In the first years of the struggle with the mother country, one common object, paramount to all other considerations, the complete establishment of their political independence, bound them together-perhaps I should more correctly say, prevented their separation;-but the very circumstances of that struggle, and the vicissitudes of the war, which often for long periods together cut off their communications with the capital, and with each other; obliging them to provide separately for their own temporary government and security, gave rise in many of them, especially those at a distance, to habits of more or less independence, which, as they imperceptibly acquired strength, produced in some, as in Paraguay and Upper Peru, an entire separation from Buenos Ayres; and in others such an assumption of the management of their own provincial affairs, as ere long reduced the metropolitan government to a nullity. It is true that, up to 1820, the semblance of a Central Government was maintained at Buenos Ayres, but in that year the unpopularity of the measures of the Directory and of the National Congress led to its final dissolution, under circumstances which precluded all hope of its re-establishment, and terminated in the system of federalism, which has ever since de facto subsisted. Experience has taught Buenos Ayres the inefficacy of forcible measures to bring back the provinces under her more immediate control; and though congresses have been more than once convoked for the purpose of establishing something more definite as to the form, at least, of their national government, whether central or federal, individual and local interests have always prevailed in thwarting such an arrangement; and the probability now is, that for a long time to come the national organization of this State will be limited to the slender bonds of voluntary confederation, which at present constitute the soi-disant union of the provinces, not only with each other, but with their old metropolis, Buenos Ayres. It is not my purpose here to enter into the history of the domestic troubles and civil dissensions which brought about this state of things in the new republic: it is an unsatisfactory, and to most of my readers would be a very unintelligible, narrative. Suffice it to say, that whilst the political importance of Buenos Ayres has been apparently not a little diminished; on the other hand, it may be questioned if the provinces have reaped any substantial advantage by shaking off their immediate dependence upon the metropolis. Most of them have suffered all the calamitous consequences of party POLITICAL STATE. 7 struggles for power, and have fallen under the arbitrary rule of the military chiefs, who, in turn, have either by fair means or foul obtained the ascendency; and if in some of them the semblance of a representative junta has been set up in imitation of that of Buenos Ayres, it will be found, I believe, that such assemblies have, in most instances, proved little more than an occasional convocation of the partisans of the governor for the time being, much more likely to confirm than to control his despotic sway. The present political state of the provinces of La Plata is certainly very different from what was expected by the generality of those who originally took an interest in the fate of these new countries. It is, however, a state of things not confined to this republic; we shall find, more or less, the same scenes; the same violent party struggles, the same continual changes of government; the same apparent incapacity for arriving at anything like a settled political organization in almost every one of the several independent states into which the old possessions of Spain on the New Continent have resolved themselves; and this under circumstances, to all appearance, the most dissimilar with regard to the locality, climate, soil, language, wants, and physical condition of the inhabitants; with no one common element, in fact, in their composition, save their having all been brought up in, and habituated to, the same colonial system of the mother country. What, then, is the conclusion we must draw from this fact? Is it not evident that it was that colonial system which, wherever applied, unfitted the people for a state of independence, and left them worse than helpless when thrown upon their own resources? Well might Spain urge upon other nations, as an argument against the recognition of those countries, that the South Americans were unfit for a state of independence. She knew the full extent of moral degradation to which her own policy had reduced them; but it was futile to allege it, when it had become manifest to all the world that her own power to reduce them again to subjection was gone for ever, and that the people of South America had not only achieved their complete independence, but were resolved and fully able to maintain it. The notoriety of those facts left no alternative to foreign governments whose subjects had any real interest in the question, whatever might be the speculative opinions of some parties as to the eventual prospects of the New States. In this country our ignorance of the real condition of the people of South America naturally led us to look back to what had taken place in our own North American colonies, and with but little discrimination perhaps, to anticipate the same results, whereas nothing in reality could be more dissimilar than the circumstances of the colonial subjects of Great Britain and Spain when their political emancipation took place. In the British colonies all the foundations of good government were already laid: the principles of civil administration were perfectly understood, and the transition was almost imperceptible. On the other hand, in the Spanish colonies the whole policy, as well as the power of the mother country, seems to have been based on perpetuating the servile state and ignorance of the natives: branded as an inferior race, they were systematically excluded from all share in the government, from commerce, and every other pursuit which might tend to the development of native talent or industry. The very history of their own unfortunate country was forbidden them, no doubt lest it should open their eyes to the reality of their own debased condition. When the struggle came, the question of their independence was soon settled irrevocably; but as to the elements for the construction at once of anything like a good government of their own, they certainly did not exist. Under these circumstances, what was perfectly natural took place. In the absence of any other real power, that of military command, which had grown out of the war, obtained an ascendency, the influence of which in all the New States became soon apparent. They fell, in fact, all of them more or less under military despotism. The people |