CHAPTER III.
State of Lima in 1811....Constitution proclaimed....Some Effects of....Wishes of the Inhabitants of Lima....Manifest of Venezuela.
On my arrival in Lima I found the same spirit of revolutionary principles disseminated among all ranks of creoles, excepting some few individuals who possessed lucrative employments under the government. The Viceroy Abascal endeavoured to check the spirit of rebellion by the mildest measures possible, avoiding all acts of persecution; he established a regiment, called de la Concordia, of concord, from the respectable inhabitants of the city, constituted himself the colonel of it, and nominated the officers from among the more leading individuals, whether Spaniards or creoles: this for a short time lulled the spirit of insurrection. The victory of Guaqui, gained by General Goyoneche over the army of Buenos Ayres, was welcomed with feasts and rejoicings; but the scarcity of wheat, the ports of Chile being closed, began to be very apparent.
In 1812 the constitutional government was proclaimed, and copies of the constitution of the Spanish monarchy were the only books that were read, consulted, and studied by all classes. The formation of a constitutional corporation, cabildo, and the election of constitutional alcaldes, caused some uproar in the city; but the measures became alarming to the Spaniards when the election of deputies for the cortes took place. The Spaniards, accustomed to consider the natives as inferiors, and almost as intruders in their own country, had now to brook their contempt in return, to bear with their opposition, and sometimes with their reproaches. The poll was conducted in the patio, or principal cloister of the convent of La Merced; several collegians of San Carlos placed themselves on the hustings, and, according to the Ley de Partido, no native of Spain is permitted to reside in the colonies without a special license of the Casa de Contratacion of Seville, or in the employ of the government, and the latter were declared by the constitution, tit. 2, cap. IV. art. 24, to have no vote. Thus as no Spaniards in Lima could produce a license, or passport, they were not allowed to vote; and this excited in them the most frantic rage and chagrin. One Spaniard presented himself with his passport, and insultingly advanced towards the hustings to vote; but one of the collegians, looking over the paper, found that the voter was a native of the Canary Islands, which being African islands, and all Africans, or descendants of Africans, being declared by art. 22, tit. 2, cap. IV. of the constitution, as not having an elective vote, unless they had obtained a letter of denizenship from the cortes, he was obliged to retire amid the shouts of the creoles, and the curses against the cortes of the Spaniards.
Nothing could possibly be more favourable to the colonies than the publication of a constitutional form of government, and the liberty of the press, as it was sanctioned by the cortes. The restrictions were such as would have produced a clamour in England, but to a slave an hour of rest is an hour of perfect freedom, and to men whose pens had been chained by political trammels and inquisitorial anathemas, a relief from such restrictions was hailed as an absolute immunity. Those colonies that still remained faithful to the mother country had an opportunity of reading the periodical papers, a thing unknown at this time, unless we except the government gazette; and although such news as was unfavourable to the Spanish system did not appear in print, yet the barefaced falsehoods of the old ministerial paper were checked in their exaggerations, by the appearance of authentic intelligence in the new papers, and the public were informed of such facts as had taken place: they were apprised of the establishment of republican governments in Mexico, Colombia, Buenos Ayres, and Chile—facts that would have been disguised by the old established authorities, and the people would have been stigmatized by the name of banditti, of discontented indians, a gang of traitors, or a horde of highwaymen and freebooters.
The inhabitants of Lima wished for a change in their form of government as ardently perhaps as those of any other part of America; and for not having established one, they have been considered by many as a race of effeminate listless cowards, and have been reported as such—but most undeservedly. Although in a cause adverse to their own interest, for many years they sustained the brunt of the war against all the forces that could be brought to the field by those whom they were taught to consider as enemies. Soldiers are instructed by the precepts and the examples of their commanders, and rarely reflect on what is right or wrong; otherwise history would not present us with such numberless instances of armed forces acting in open hostility against their very homes, their friends, and their parents; wherever a city is garrisoned by a military force, the inhabitants as well as the soldiers must submit to the will of the commanders. Such was the state of Lima: many of the soldiers it is true were Limeños, but many were from different parts of Peru, and nearly the whole of the officers were Spaniards, and those who were not were under the suspicious eye of jealous masters.
At first, the several provinces that revolted, and which had established new governments, most solemnly declared, that it was not their intention to separate from the crown of Spain, but to govern themselves in such a manner as would secure to that crown the possession of America. The Regency of Spain, however, invested with the authority to govern the peninsula, insisted on the prerogative of governing the American colonies, forgetting that the famous grant of America made by Pope Alexander VI. annexed America to the crowns of Castile and Arragon, and not to the nation nor to any representative body belonging to that nation. Every individual that was apprehended during the first years of commotion was treated as a traitor. At Quito the words "constituted authorities" contained in the oath which was administered were converted into high treason, and there is no doubt but Arrechaga would have solicited the sentence of capital punishment on all those who had taken it, had not their number included many of his friends.
Declarations of independence, and manifestos containing the motives for at once separating from the mother country, now began to circulate among the natives of Peru; and although some of them contained exaggerations, and the government of Lima became possessed of copies of them, yet such was the apathy or the timidity of the chiefs, that no attempt at refutation was ever made. The following are translations of papers from Venezuela, which fully express all the grievances of which the Hispano-Americans complained. They were drawn up for the purpose of instilling into the minds of their countrymen a determination to shake off those grievances, and to convince the world at large that the insurrection of the Spanish colonies had become a matter of necessity and not of choice:
"Manifesto made to the world by the confederation of Venezuela in South America, of the reasons on which it founds its absolute independence of Spain, and of every other foreign power. Done by the general Congress of the United States, and ordered to be published.