The hatred of an enslaved people against their tyrants, the jealousy of a dependent race against the race which has dominated over them for centuries were both expressed in that one shout, which had in it nothing of love, nothing of fear:
"Spain has fallen!"
[BOOK VI]
LIBERTY
[PROLOGUE]
The division of youth from manhood is marked by no fixed line established by law or custom. To each youth there comes a day when, without aid or counsel, he has to decide upon some important step which shall influence the whole course of his future life. According to the bias of his nature he ponders long upon this step, or he comes rapidly to some decision. The day he so decides marks for him the end of his youth, the commencement of his manhood.
When a youth so steps into manhood, he meet the world face to face, and braces himself for the encounter. Hope, which is the dowry of youth, attends upon him; he puts forth all his energies, never doubting of success, and achieves that which is deemed impossible.
Buenos Aires, long impatient of Spanish tyranny, saw her tyrant helpless; she saw a continent around her, groaning with the slavery of centuries; she felt within herself the strength of a young nation, and asked herself whether the task were not hers to give liberty to these enslaved peoples, to achieve it for herself.