to assist the late General Miranda in his first endeavours to promote the independence of South America, which, after a sanguinary contest, has at length been crowned with apparently complete success[1].
Unfortunately for the subject of this memoir, his appointment to the Lily was not known in England until after the impeachment of Viscount Melville; and Lord Barham’s secretary having neglected to lay it before the latter nobleman for confirmation, another officer was inadvertently selected to fill the vacancy, as will be seen by the following extract of a letter from Sir Alexander Cochrane, K.B. to his lordship’s successor, dated May 6, 1806:
- ↑ So early as 1790, Mr Pitt had conceived the project of emancipating the colonies of South America, if the dispute with Spain, respecting Nootka Sound, should cause a war between that power and Great Britain. The plan was submitted to General Miranda and some able Jesuit missionaries, who, when expelled from those settlements, had taken refuge in Italy; and although suspended for a time it was not altogether abandoned. A similar scheme was imagined by Mr. Addington, in 1801, but the peace of Amiens once more prevented it from being put into execution.
Participating in the general domestic gloom of 1804, and feeling the imperative duty of taking a bold step to open other markets to our manufactures, Mr. Pitt had again recourse to the same expedient. Miranda was called on, and a respectable naval force was destined to accompany him, under the command of Sir Hope Popham. Many thousand stand of arms were to have been embarked for the use of those who were expected to revolt, pilots were nominated, the rendezvous was to have been at the island of Trinidad, and the debarkation was to have been effected upon the banks of the Oronoco. Such was the outline of the plan meditated in Dec. 1804, when the Diadem, a 64-gun ship, was commissioned for Sir Home Popham; but it was deranged by many disastrous military events in Europe, and the great anxiety of our cabinet to endeavour, by friendly negociation, to detach Spain from her connection with France, a power which, by the overwhelming progress of her arms over the continent, held every state not yet conquered, in the same submission from their terror, as if Napoleon’s legions had already entered their capitals. The armament subsequently sent from the Leeward Islands, under acting Captain Campbell, consisted of the Lily sloop, two gun-brigs, two smaller vessels, commanded by sub-Lieutenants, and Miranda’s own ship, bearing the present Columbian colours.
