The National Register.
London, England, 1814-09-04 00:00:00

THE NATIONAL REGISTER.

work, published for Mr. Ridgway, by Mr. William
Walton, certainly contains more local information and
sound reasoning on the real interests of England regardi
Ig
the point in question, than any thing before printed. t
not only explains with method the origin and progress of
these dissentions, but it points out how they will
affect us
in a political and commercial point of view. It deve-
lopc:; the resources of Spanish America, establishes the so-
cial rights of its inhabitants, and throws a prodigious mass
of !ight On an interesting bnt hitherto obscure question.
Disengaged as we arc from an active struggle, and
bgund to increase our resources, as a means to make up
for past losses, Spanish America presents herself, as it were,
like a new spot in the creation, with streams of wealth,
which, like the ancient Pactolus, may carry plenty to
crown our most sanguine hopes. This immense continent,
even under its old degradation, consumed £13,320,000
of imported goods, and afforded to the world, coin and
groat territorial productions ; and, as Mr. W. states,
is capable of an astonishing progressl—and is this to be
diregarded ? Spanish America has now overgrown Spain,
and the late Madrid papers seem to despair of ever again
securing her allegiance. The sole object of France is now
to extend her commerce, to make up for past inactivity,
and, most assuredly, it is to Spanish America she turns her
eager eyes. French scarants have long travelled there :
this was a flattering scheme of Buonaparte's ; many
French officers are now emigrating there, and it behoves
EnOand carefully to watch, that she is not supplanted, or
shut out from an equal participation in resources to which,
on the core of gratitude, she has a greater claim.
it being our intention, from time to time, to call the at-
tention of the British public to this important subject, by
extracting some of the most remarkable passages of Mr.
Walto,Cs work, both relating to Spain and Spanish Ame-
rica, w e will, for the present, close our remarks m ith the

followimr, pas ~age from page 17'2 :

64 If, o.erefore, an over delicacy on the part of England,
has been the eanse or a pro,ongation of the horrors already
sketched ; if, from a want of energy and by a tame snbser-
viencv to !"•pain, the calls of humanity, prudence., and in-
tc!-est, have been unheard; is it not time, to ponder on the
di,tre,sed situl,tion Spaoish America, and as a compensa-
tion. for our past neglect, nay, as a return for the unpro-
v,:ked aeg, avat:ons we ourselves once brought on the heads
of its inhabitants, and also to retrieve our honour, is it not
time to tic the principles and basis, essential to the restora
tion of peace? As before inculcated, Spain is a party, un-
der irritated and pa tii,l feelings, and consequently, cannot
130 ht own umpire. i v her conduct, and by the hostile,
cr,lf.l, wry inhuman, inste.id of conciliatory mea,ures, pur-
sue;i, stle has hurled the art ow of defiance at every hope of

SPPT. 4,

reconciliation, by her own means ; and oppression and nar-
row-mirded policy, have completed that baneful structure.
of which political hatred, the clashing of interests, and
the deadly spirit of monopoly, first laid the foundation.
As before clearly roved, for Spain to affiance her sway in
the manner she now seeks, it must be on ihc ruin or degra-

dation of a forsaken, but onoffending people.

Yet still her

object is not secure. She may, for a while, rivet and pro-
long the chains of despotism ; from her fortified places, the
illusion may yet be maintained, and hairassing expeditions
may be fitted out to carry discord and havoc amongst the per.
severing natives. Spain may yet use further exertions,
and send out more troops, till the whole country is wrapped
in a wider, and still more bloody waste of anarchy and
slaughter ; but in all, or either of these cases, does not the
philanthropic mind stand appalled; does not human nature
shudder at such devastations, murders, and enormities; and
does not the united voice of humanity and of policy, call
aloud for the cessation of such multiplied evils?
The Spanish Americans, also, who have beheld all their
efforts of redress treated with disdain ; who see the sacred
rights they have inherited from their forefathers trampled
to the ground; and their 'with &um covered with ruins,
and deluged with the blood of its natives, who behold that
very constitution the agents of Spain have been planting
with the bayonet's point, now revokes and held up to public
scorn ; who have before them, nothing but the prospect of
a worse degradation, than that they before experienced; and
who, in short, sec that they have only to trust to an incon-
sistent and faithless people, will consider that the Rubicon is
passed, and conceiving that they are authorised by every
law, human and divine, to persist in their enterprize, will
render their insulted country a tomb to all Europeans;
arming the coloured natives, and, as in Caracas, declaring
a general death war, and rushing into dreadful retaliation,
they will render their unfortunate country, a blot in the
works of the creation. Nay, do we not already see, that
the weapons of each arc sharpening for mutual slaughter,
and that s general war-yell, resounds through the unfilled
vallies and demolished towns of New Spain, Caracas, La
Plata, Santa Fe, Chili, Quito, &c. and that it is soon likely
to spread to Peru, Guayaquil, and Guatemala, the only
points, where the Geslers and Verres of Spain, have been
able to insure control.
" Gradually, as the spirit of animosity has flamed wider,
and as local wrongs and unheard-of outrages, have i
pel le dto resistance and firm-set purposes, the Spanish
Arne: icans have talien their stand ; and sooner than re-
turn► to their old degraded state ; sooner than again sutler
their chains to be put on by those very hands which
have torn to pieces their rights and charter;; which have
so long rent the bosom of their country with anarchy and
a mercenary civil war, and are, besides, crimsoned with
the blood of so many of their fellow citizens and relations,
they are resolved to perish in the sruggle, and, at least,
transmit to their posterity, the records of those just en-
deavours, which ouOt to have insured theta the respect
of even their enemies. Roused, as they are, to a sense of