General Don Jose de San Martin, formerly the "Protector of Peru," and one of the most deservedly eminent of the public men of the Spanish American States, died in August, 1850, at Bologna, in the seventy-second year of his age. His death has but recently been announced, and we receive the information now, not from Europe or from South America, but by way of the Sandwich Islands. The Honolulu Polynesian of December fourteenth, translating from the Panameno, gives us the following particulars of his life. General San Martin was a native of one of the Provinces of Buenos Ayres, but previous to the war of independence, passed over to Spain, where he entered into the army, and distinguished himself at the battle of Baylen. In the Spanish army, he rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. After his native country, Buenos Ayres, had declared itself independent of the mother country, he returned from Spain, and fought with great bravery, against Artigas, and in other military contests. He thereby gained so much reputation with his countrymen, that when an expedition to liberate Chile was determined upon, he was the chief chosen to organize and command it. He fulfilled that trust, in an admirable manner, at Mendoza—carried his small army successfully across the Andes, through an able piece of strategy, confided to a brave young Chilian, Don Manuel Rodriguez, at a point where the Spanish forces did not expect the invading army, and signally defeated them, on the plains of Chacabuco, near the Capital of Chile. The defeated Spaniards had to retire and concentrate themselves in the South. San Martin occupied the whole country and shut them up in Talcachuano. Expecting that the Spaniards would be soon reinforced from Peru, San Martin, with the aid of several foreign officers, French and English, recruited his forces in Chile, and raised his army to about 9000 men. A strong reinforcement having arrived from Peru, at Talcahuano, under the command of General Ossioro, the Spaniards regained possession of the Province of Concepcion, took the offensive, and advanced towards the Capital. San Martin, with forces numerically superior, advanced to drive them back. The two armies met at "Cancha Rayada," where, on San Martin's birth day, in 1819, the Spaniards attacked his army at night, signally defeated and dispersed them. The only division that retired unbroken, was that commanded by General Don Gregorio de las Heras, and the army of the Andes left on the field its whole artillery, excepting only one piece which was saved by the personal exertions and cool intrepidity of Captain Miller, of that army, now H. B. M. Consul General for these Islands. After that unexpected defeat, the greatest consternation prevailed in the Capital of Chile, the cause of the Republic was considered desperate, but the Supreme Director, General Don Bernardo Ohiggins, made immense exertions to reunite the scattered army and to strengthen it, by new levies; the patriotism of the Chilians roused itself with an energy equal to the emergency; resident foreign merchants, wishing well to the country and alarmed by a report that it was the intention of the Spanish Commander in Chief to shoot them all and confiscate their property (it being then contrary to the laws of Spain that foreigners should reside in or trade with her Colonies without special license), supplied money, arms and accoutrements. An army was thus reformed with extraordinary expedition; its confidence was restored by a troop of cavalry sent to reconnoitre, headed by Major Vial, a brave French officer, who gallantly charged and routed a superior force of the enemy, and, under the command of General San Martin, on the 5th of April, 1850, on the plain of Maypu, it defeated the Spanish army so completely, that only a few of the fugitives reached Talcahuano.
But experience having shown that the independence of Chile could never be considered secure so long as the Spaniards retained their hold on Peru, it was resolved to make an attempt to liberate that Vice-Royalty. Colonel Miller, whose promotion after the affair of Cancha Rayadu had been rapid, was sent with a small but active force to land at Arica and operate in the Southern Provinces, where by astute strategy and several brilliant successes he confirmed his high reputation. San Martin soon after followed with the main army, escorted by the Chilian squadron under command of Lord Cochran; in running down the coast, he took in Colonel Miller with his troops, and knowing the powerful diversion that the latter had made in the South, he proceeded northward to Pisco, where a force was landed under the command of Colonel Charles and Colonel Miller, that made itself master of the place, after a bloody combat, in which the former gallantly fell while cheering on his troops, and the latter received several musket balls, one of which passed through his liver.
According to the plan of General San Martin, the force landed to the South of Lima, advanced into the interior to the silver mines of Pasco under the command of General Arenales, where it defeated the Spanish forces under General Oreilly, while San Martin himself, with the main body, effected his landing near Huacho to the North of Lima. By this plan, ably conceived and no less ably executed, the Spaniards were reduced to the Capital and Callao, which port at the same time was strictly blockaded by Lord Cochran's squadron. The fall of both Lima and Callao was only a question of time; it was retarded for some months owing to the great sickness that weakened San Martin's ranks; but these were filled up by desertions from the enemy; the whole regiment of Numancia passed over to the Patriot side, and at last San Martin entered the Capital at the head of his troops, amidst the acclamations of the inhabitants. He was soon after declared Protector of Peru, and General-in-Chief of the Army. Having now a Peruvian character, and having come to liberate—not to conquer the country, he considered it right to create a Peruvian Army. As a nucleus for its formation, the Peruvian Legion (intended to consist of several Batallions), was raised, and placed under the command of Colonel Miller. But Lima and its luxuries proved the Capua of San Martin's army—national jealousies arose between the Buenos Ayrean and the Chilian chiefs—San Martin's confidence in foreign officers and his endeavors to create a national army in Peru gave great umbrage to both; a secret political Lodge was formed among the leading chiefs of corps, and he was openly charged with latent designs to make himself the King or Perpetual Dictator of Peru.
The Spanish army, which had evacuated the Capital unbroken, profiting by these dissensions and the delay of the Patriot army in the Capital, had largely recruited itself in the valley of Jauja; they were every day gaining more strength, while the Patriot army was becoming daily weaker both physically and morally; under these circumstances General San Martin sought an interview with Bolivar, at Guayaquil, and shortly after his return to Lima, in 1822, he resigned his high post of Protector and General-in-chief, and embarked for Europe. On his arrival in Europe, after a short visit to the East of Fife, San Martin passed his time chiefly in Brussels and Paris, so much respected by all who knew him, and so esteemed for his probity, that Sor Aguado, the rich Spanish Banker, on his death-bed, named San Martin his Executor.
It is believed that he retired from Peru, disgusted with the false charges that were brought against him, and after having obtained a promise from his great rival, Bolivar, that he would finish the war, which it would have been much for San Martin's own glory to have concluded himself. If so, he had the magnanimity to prefer the good of Peru to his own glory, a virtue never found except amongst men of great nobleness of soul. San Martin may have even thought that under the circumstances, his great rival was fitter to conclude the war than he was himself; and if he did so, the result proved at once his modesty and the soundness of his judgment, for when the Peruvian Government had fairly intrusted their destinies to Bolivar, in rapid succession, he fought the bloody battles of Junin and Ayacucho, the result of which was the final and total liberation of Peru.
Nor was Bolivar less just to foreign officers of merit than San Martin. Amongst his Generals and Aid-de-camps ranked General Brawn, General Oleary, Colonel Wilson, and many others; and Colonel Miller (who had been raised to the rank of General), as the reward of his gallant conduct in the last hard-fought fields of Junin and Ayacucho, received the further honor of being declared a Marescal de Agacucho. To other officers of Peru, of Chile and of Buenos Ayres, Bolivar was equally just, thus showing that he was superior to any petty jealousy of those chiefs with whose aid San Martin, his illustrious predecessor, had made those great achievements which a weaker mind might have looked upon with envy as, in some respects, overwhelming his own.
Frederick Bastiat, the political economist, whose health had been very feeble for nearly a year, and of whose death last summer in Italy a report was copied into the International, died in Rome on the 24th of December. He was born at Bayonne in 1801, and after completing his education, he retired to a quiet village in the department of Landes, to pursue his favorite studies of trade and society. He was successively called to various offices of the department, and to the present National Assembly he was chosen by a vote of 56,000, being the second in the list of seven representing the Landes. His first book, we believe, was Cobden et la Ligue, published in 1844, from which period he was an industrious writer. Without being a discoverer of new truths, he possessed in an eminent degree the faculty of expanding, with clearness and vigor, the grounds and the effects of complex natural laws already developed by the technical processes of philosophy. His writings have been exceedingly popular. The whole or nearly the whole, of the tracts written by him under the generic title of 'Sophismes Economiques,' originally appeared in the Journal des Economistes—a periodical of which for the last six years he had been a principal supporter. The disease of which he died was a very painful and peculiar affection of the throat. He had suffered from it more or less, for some years; and the hard work of the last session of the Assembly brought the disorder to a crisis which the strength of the patient did not enable him to overcome. He may be regarded as the virtual leader of the Free Trade party in France. He aided with all his energies the Association Française pour la Liberté des Échanges, and he did his utmost to spread among his countrymen that new philosophy of trade. His last and most important work, Les Harmonies Economiques, we lately noticed in these pages. His Sophismes Economiques were translated a few years ago by a daughter of Langdon Cheves, of South Carolina, and published in this city by Mr. Putnam. The extent to which M. Bastiat was indebted to our countryman, Henry C. Carey, may be inferred from a note in the February number of the International, page 402.
Benjamin W. Crowninshield, died in Boston, on Monday the 3d of February. He had left his carriage and entered a store, when he suddenly fell and expired, having previously suffered from a disease of the heart, which is supposed to have been the cause of his death, although he was about 77 years of age. He had been a resident of Boston nearly twenty years, during the greater part of which period he had been retired from public life. He had previously resided in Salem, where the Crowninshields were long distinguished for wealth and commercial enterprise. He was many years a prominent leader of the old democratic republican party. In December, 1814, he received, from President Madison, the appointment of Secretary of the Navy, which office he held (being continued by President Monroe) until he resigned, in November, 1818, when he was succeeded by Smith Thompson, afterwards judge of the Supreme Court. In 1823 he was chosen a member of Congress from Essex South District, and was continued by his constituents in that station until 1831—eight years. He was in Congress when John Quincy Adams was elected President of the United States, by that body; he participated in that election by giving his vote for Mr. A., and was a zealous supporter of his administration, acting subsequently with the whig party. He was repeatedly, at different periods of his life, a member of the state legislature, and although not distinguished for eminent talents, in all the stations which he filled he enjoyed, in a high degree, the public confidence.