testant religion; although the wishes of his Majesty's Government upon this subject were complied with by Buenos Ayres, and, under certain limitations, by Columbia likewise.
In Mexico, the third article of the Federal Act rendered a similar compliance impossible. It becomes, therefore, interesting to enquire by what means New Spain has been thrown so far behind the Sister States of the South in point of rational toleration.
It is to the history of the Revolution that we must look for the causes of the difference, which now prevails; for, in 1810, it may fairly be assumed that superstition and intolerance were pretty equally disseminated throughout the Spanish Colonies in the New World. But, in Buenos Ayres, since the first declaration of the independence (May 1810), not a single Spanish soldier has entered the territory of the Republic: the intercourse with Foreigners has been constantly open, and constantly kept up; and it would have been hard indeed, if, in thirteen years, the minds of the people had not been prepared, by the gradual amalgamation of interests which has taken place, to entertain a more indulgent view of the religion of those Foreigners, than that which their former masters had laboured to inculcate.
In Columbia, the case has been different in some respects, although in others nearly the same. A general freedom of intercourse with Europe was not, indeed, immediately established, but a numerous
