Prince of Peace, (Godoy,) and to the abdication of Charles IV., gave the first shock to the Royal authority in America. An absolute monarch, compelled to bow before the will of a tumultuous populace, insulted by his subjects, and deserted by his guards, in the very heart of his kingdom, was a sight that could not but tend to diminish those feelings of almost religious awe, with which any thing like opposition to the will of the Sovereign had been previously contemplated.
The subsequent invasion of the Peninsula by Napoleon, the captivity of the Monarch, and the abdication of the Old Dynasty at Bayonne, contributed to destroy whatever remained of the prestige, which had before attached to the name of Spain, and created an impression, only the more strong, because, to the mass of the people in America, she was still the Spain of the sixteenth century, in whose dominions the sun never set, and whose arms were the terror of the world.
This belief had long been the tutelary angel of the Mother country: with it, she lost her moral force, (the only force capable of compelling the obedience of seventeen million of Transatlantic subjects,) and, from that moment, the loss of the Colonies themselves became inevitable.
It was in vain to struggle against nature, or to attempt to subdue that new spirit, which, within two years after the invasion of the Peninsula, began to appear amongst all classes of the Creoles. Its pro-
