The Emancipation of South America

by Bartolomé Mitre

In 1820 despotism triumphed in Europe under the banners of absolute kings allied against the liberties of the people, but in South America the cause of independence, fostered by the example of the United States, was successful. From this epoch the reaction of American thought is felt in the Parliament of England, and influences even Spain herself, where the armies collected to stamp out revolution in America, turn against the absolute king and re-establish a constitutional régime. This is a critical moment: upon the triumph or the defeat of revolution in South America depend the destinies of two worlds.

Five years later on, victory crowned her efforts, America is republican, independent, and free. From this moment the current of history, which has for three centuries carried despotism from the East to the West, now turns back; the action of the principles of American regeneration flows from West to East and spreads over Europe until stopped by the barrier of Islamism. Greece cries out for emancipation, and Europe instead of joining to crush her aspirations, runs to help her. Portugal becomes free by the example and influence of her American colonies, who send back to her her absolute kings, transformed into constitutional rulers. In France the revolution of 1789 revives in a compromise between monarchy and a republic, its champions being a comrade of Washington and an emigrant prince who had studied American democracy at close quarters. Take away the South American revolution of the year ’10, suppose it to be suppressed in 1820, or eliminate the final triumph of 1825, and the republic of the United States remains the sole representative of liberty; and the world, even with the help of free England, lies grovelling under the sway of absolutism.

Attempts at Monarchy in South America.

Had the idea of Aranda been adopted in 1783, it is probable that a bastard monarchy would have been established in America, upon which time would have impressed the seal of democracy. Had the King of Spain removed his throne to America in 1808, as did he of Portugal, it is possible that the course of the revolution might have been changed under dynastic auspices, delaying the advent of the republic and perchance accelerating constitutional stability. These two opportunities being lost, the revolution could only develop in accordance with its own nature and become essentially a republican movement.

The Pilgrim Fathers of New England and the Quakers of Pennsylvania carried with them the seed of republicanism. The Cavaliers who colonized Virginia became republicans by founding a new country of a distinct type, which produced Washington. The Spanish colonists of South America brought with them no such ideas but only germs of individualism, from which time developed desires for independence and for equality. The indigenous races knew nothing of any form of government except monarchy. The Creoles were born republicans. The idea of establishing a monarchy never sprang from a Creole brain, and when proposed was looked upon by them only as a compromise or as an artificial expedient when it was not folly. In 1808 the English constitution was the ideal of thinkers trained in the school of Montesquieu. In 1810 the social contract of Rousseau was their gospel, and the revolution of that year assumed spontaneously a popular form, producing municipal republics, whereby the course of opinion became exclusively democratic.

When early reverses damped the republican hopes of Argentine leaders, they looked to the establishment of a monarchy under the protection of the Great Powers as a means of securing independence and constitutional freedom. In 1814 it was proposed to crown an Infante of Spain King of La Plata. In 1816 that same Congress which declared the independence of the Argentine Provinces, embraced the idea of crowning a descendant of the Incas at Cuzco, and uniting Peru and the River Plate under his rule, a proposition quenched in ridicule. The same Congress, in 1819, after swearing to and promulgating a republican constitution, sought in Europe for a king, lowering their character in the eyes of the world, and bringing accusations of treachery upon themselves from their own countrymen.

This reaction took place precisely at the time when the perseverance of the republicans had gained for them universal sympathy, when the United States threw her shield over the infant peoples to protect them from the attacks of the Holy Alliance, and when England, after declaring that she would not recognise “the revolutionary governments of America,” became convinced of her mistake. The agents of this policy were men such as Rivadavia, who stands in America second alone to Washington as the representative statesman of a free people; such as Belgrano, the type of republican virtue; and such as San Martin, who, a republican at heart, had no faith in democracy, yet founded republics which by natural law became democracies. When San Martin ignored this law, his career as a liberator came to an end. So also, later on, fell Bolívar in the attempt to convert democracy into monocracy. The only American liberator who in his folly crowned himself emperor—Iturbide in Mexico—died on the scaffold, a presage of the sad end of another emperor, whose corpse was sent back to Europe as a protest against the imposition of monarchy.

The Empire of Brazil is apparently a proof of the possibility of establishing monarchy in America, but the contrary is the fact. Brazil is a democratic empire, founded upon the principle of the sovereignty of the people, without any privileged class or hereditary nobility, and has nothing monarchical about it except the name.

Retrospection.

When the war was over and the continent at peace, Bolívar exclaimed, “I blush to say it, independence is the only good we have achieved at the cost of all else.” Even at this price independence was solid gain, for it was life. The continuance of the colonial system was death by decomposition. Independence was, moreover, the establishment of the democratic republic, a system under which all losses may be retrieved. South America has no reason to complain of the task allotted to her in working out the destiny of humanity.