gress was both rapid, and irresistible; and, without any previous concert amongst the parties themselves, without even the possibility of foreign interference, a mighty revolution broke out at once, in almost every part of the New World.
A momentary enthusiasm in favour of the Mother country, was, indeed, excited (in 1808) by the resolution of the Spanish people to vindicate their rights, and not tamely to submit to a yoke, which, force and fraud combined, seemed, at first, to render inevitable; but the rapid progress of the French arms, during the year 1809, the weakness and reverses of the Central Junta, its retreat into Andalusia, and the gradual occupation of the whole of that province by the invading army, with the exception of Cadiz, not only checked this favourable disposition, but completed that change in the feelings and opinions of the Creoles, for which the occurrences of the preceding year had prepared the way. They regarded Spain as lost, and degraded almost to the rank of a province of France; and they saw no plea of right, or justice, by which obedience could be exacted from them to the agents of a government, which was itself decried, and disobeyed with impunity at home. The King was the only tie that connected them with Spain; for it was the fundamental principle of Spanish Jurisprudence, with regard to America, to consider what had been acquired there, as rested in the Crown, and not in the State. In the absence of the Monarch, therefore, the Creoles might, with jus-
