Civilization and Barbarism/Chapter 7

by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento

CHAPTER VII.

SOCIAL LIFE.

"Society in the Middle Ages was composed of the wrecks of a thousand other societies. All the forms of liberty and servitude were found in it; the monarchical liberty of the king, the individual liberty of the priest, the privileged liberty of kings, the representative liberty of the nation, Roman slavery, barbarian serfage, and the servitude of escheatage (aubane)."—Chateaubriand.

Facundo is now in possession of La Rioja, its umpire and absolute master; no other voice is heard there, no other interest than his exists there. As there is no literature, there are no opposing opinions. La Rioja is a military machine which will move as it is moved. Thus far, however, Facundo has done nothing new; Dr. Francia, Ibarra, Lopez, and Bustos, had done the same; and Guemes and Araos had attempted it in the North; that is, to destroy all existing rights for the purpose of strengthening their own. But beyond La Rioja lay an agitated world of ideas and of contradictory interests, whence came to Quiroga's residence in the Llanos the distant sounds of the controversies of the press and of political parties. Again his rise to pwer was necessarily attended by the spread of the clamor resulting from his-overthrow of the edifice of civilization, and by his becoming an object of attention to the neighboring commonwealths. His name had passed the frontiers of La Rioja; Rivadavia was inviting him to assist in the organization of the Republic; Bustos and Lopez wished him to oppose it; the government of San Juan complacently reckoned him among its friends, and strangers came to the Llanos to pay him their respects and to ask support in behalf of one party or another.

At that time the Argentine Republic presented an animated and interesting picture. All interests, all ideas, all passions, met together to create agitation and tumult. Here, was a chief who would have nought to do with the rest of the Republic; there, a community whose only desire was to emerge from its isolation; yonder, a government engaged in bringing Europe over to America; elsewhere, another to which the very name of civilization was odious; the Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition was reviving in some places; in others, liberty of conscience was proclaimed the first of human rights; the cry of one party was for confederation; of others for a central government; while each different combination was backed by strong and unconquerable passions. I must clear up the chaos a little, to show the role which it fell to Quiroga to enact, and the great work he was to bring to pass. In order to depict the provincial commandant who took possession of the city and annulled its constitution, I have found it necessary to describe the face of nature in the Argentine Republic, with the habits induced and the forms of character developed by it. And to describe Quiroga extending his power beyond his own province and proclaiming a principle, an idea, and carrying it everywhere at the point of the bayonet, I must likewise sketch the geographical distributions of the ideas and interests which were agitated in the cities. With this object, it is requisite for me to examine two cities under the sway of opposite ideas. These cities are Cordova and Buenos Ayres, as they existed in 1825, and previously.

CORDOVA.

Cordova, though somewhat in the grave old Spanish style, is the most charming city in South America in its first aspect. It is situated in a hollow formed in an elevated region called the Altos. So closely are its symmetrical buildings crowded together for want of space, that it may be said to be folded back upon itself. The sky is remarkably clear, the winter season dry and bracing, the summers hot and stormy. Towards the east it has a promenade of singular beauty, the capricious outlines of which strike the eye with magical effect. It consists of a square pond surrounded by a very broad walk, shaded by ancient willow-trees of colossal size. Each side is of the length of a cuadra,^[1] and the inclosure is of wrought iron grating, with enormous doors in the centre of each of the four sides, so that the promenade is an enchanted prison, within which its inmates circulate around a beautiful temple of Greek architecture. In the chief square stands the magnificent cathedral, of Gothic construction, with its immense dome carved in arabesques, the only model of mediæval architecture, so far as I know, existing in South America. Another square is occupied by the church and convent of the Society of Jesus, in the presbytery of which is a trap-door communicating with excavations which extend to some distance below the city, which are at present but imperfectly explored; dungeons have also been discovered where the Society buried its criminals alive. If any one wishes to become acquainted with monuments of the Middle Ages, and to examine into the power and the constitution of that celebrated religious order above referred to, Cordova is the place where one of its greatest central establishments was situated.

In every square of that compact city stands a superb convent, a monastery, or a house for unprofessional nuns, or for the performance of specific religious exercises. In former times every family included a priest, a monk, a nun, or a chorister; the poorer classes contenting themselves with having among them a hermit, a lay brother, a sacristan, or an acolyte.

Each convent or monastery possessed a set of adjoining out-buildings, where lived and multiplied eight hundred slaves of the Order, negroes, zamboes, mulattoes, and quadroons, with blue eyes, fair and waving hair, limbs as polished as marble, genuine Circassians adorned with every grace, but showing their African origin by their teeth, serving for bait to the passions of man, all for the greater honor and profit of the convent to which these houris belonged.^[2]

Here is also the celebrated University of Cordova, founded as long ago as the year 1613, and in whose gloomy cloisters eight generations of medicine and divinity, both branches of law, illustrious writers, commentators, and scholars have passed their youth. Let us hear the description given by the celebrated Dean Funes of the course of instruction and the spirit of this famous university, which has for two centuries provided a great part of South America with theologians and doctors. "The course of theology lasted for five years and a half. Theology had come to share in the corruption of philosophy. The Aristotelian philosophy applied to theology had resulted in a mixture of the profane with the spiritual. Mere human reasonings, deceptive subtleties and sophisms, frivolous and misplaced inquiries—such were the conditions under whichthe ruling taste of these schools had been formed." If you would look a little deeper into the spirit of liberty likely to be the result of such teaching, listen a little longer to Dean Funes: "This university was originated and established wholly by Jesuits, who founded it in their college of the city of Cordova, called Maximo." Very distinguished advocates have proceeded from this institution, but no man of letters who has not also been educated at Buenos Ayres with modern books.

This learned city has never yet had a public theatre, nor become acquainted with the opera. It is still without journals, and typography is a branch of industry which has failed to take root in it. The spirit of Cordova up to 1829 was monastic and scholastic; the conversation of its society always turned on processions, the saints' days, university examinations, taking the vail, and reception of the doctor's "tassels."

How far these circumstances tended to influence the temper of a population occupied with such ideas for two centuries, cannot be determined; but some influence they must have had, as is plain at a glance. The inhabitant of Cordova does not look beyond his own horizon; that horizon is four blocks distant from his own. When he takes his afternoon stroll, instead of going and returning thpough a spacious avenue of poplars as long as the Paseo of Santiago, which expands and animates the mind, he follows an artificial lake of motionless and lifeless water, in the centre of which stands a structure of magnificent proportions, immovable and stationary. The city is a cloister surrounded by ravines; the promenade is a cloister with iron grates; every square of houses has a cloister of nuns or friars; the colleges are cloisters; the jurisprudence taught there, the theology, all the mediseval scholastic learning of the place, is a mental cloister within which the intellect is walled up and fortified against every departure from text and commentary. Cordova knows not that aught besides Cordova exists on earth; it has, indeed, heard that there is such a place as Buenos Ayres, but if it believes this, which it does not always, it asks: "Has it a university? but it must be an affair of yesterday. How many convents has it? Has it such a promenade as this? If not, it amounts to nothing."

"Whose work on jurisprudence do you study?" inquired the grave Doctor Gijena, of a young man from Buenos Ayres.

"Bentham's."

"Whose, sir, do you say? Little Bentham's?"^[3] indicating with his finger the size of the duodecimo in which Bentham's work is published. . . . "That wretched little Bentham's! There is more sense in one of my writings than in all those wind-bags. What a university, and what contemptible doctors!"

"And you," said the other, "whose book do you study? What!"

"Cardinal Lucques."

"What say you, sir? seventeen folio volumes?"

It is a fact that as a traveller approaches Cordova, he looks along the horizon without discovering the sanctimonious and mysterious city, the city which wears the doctor's cap and tassels. At last his guide says, "Look there, it is down there among the bushes." And in reality, as he fixes his gaze upon the ground at a short distance in advance, there appear one, two, three, ten crosses, followed by domes and towers, belonging to the many churches which adorn this Pompeii of mediæval Spain.

To conclude, the mechanics shared the spirit of the upper classes: a master-shoemaker put on the airs of a doctor in shoemaking, and would level a Latin aphorism at a man as he gravely took his measure; the ergo of the scholar might be heard in the kitchens, and every dispute between a couple of porters took the sound and shape of philosophical demonstrations. We may add, that throughout the revolution, Cordova was the asylum of all fugitive Spaniards. What impression would the revolution of 1810 be likely to make upon a population educated by Jesuits, and secluded thus by nature, by teaching, and by art?

Had revolutionary ideas, such as are found in Rousseau, Mably, and Voltaire, happened to spread over the pampas and descend into this Spanish catacomb,—if we may so speak,—what response would they have been likely to find from those brains disciplined by the Aristotelian system to reject all new ideas, those intellects which, like their own promenade, had an immovable idea in their centre, unapproachaWe through a stagnant lake?

Toward 1816 the illustrious and liberal Dean Funes succeeded in introducing into the ancient university of the city the studies previously so much contemned: mathematics, living languages, public law, physics, drawing, and music. From that time the youth of Cordova began to direct their ideas into new channels which, ere long, led them to consequences of which we will speak hereafter. At present, I am describing the old traditional spirit of the place, which was the dominant one.

The Revolution of 1810 found the ears of Cordova closed to it at the very time when all the provinces were at once responding to the cry of "To arms! Liberty!" It was in Cordova that Liniers began to raise armies to put down the revolution in Buenos Ayres. It was to Cordova that the Junta sent one of its members and its troops to decapitate Spain. It was Cordova, which, offended by this outrage, and looking for vengeance and reparation, wrote, with the learned hand of the University, and in the idiom of the breviary and the commentators, that celebrated acrostic^[4] which pointed out to those who passed the spot the tomb of the first royalists who were sacrificed upon the altars of the state.

In 1820, a force stationed in Arequete revolted, and General Bustos, its leader, abandoning the banners of his country, established himself quietly at Cordova, which congratulated itself for having thus robbed the nation of one of its armies. Bustos created an irresponsible colonial government, introduced court etiquette and the perennial torpor of Spain, and thus prepared, Cordova entered upon the year 1828, when the question before the country was the organization of the Republic and the establishment of the revolutionary system with all its consequences.^[5]

BUENOS AYRES.

Let us now turn our attention to Buenos Ayres. Its first struggle was with the aborigines by whom it was swept from the face of the earth. It recovered itself more than once, until in 1620 it figured in the Spanish dominions sufficiently to be erected into a district governed by a Captain-general, and to be separated from Paraguay, under whose government it had previously existed. In 1777, Buenos Ayres had already become very conspicuous, so much so, indeed, that it was necessary to remould the administrative geography of the colonies, and to make Buenos Ayres the chief section. A viceroyal government was expressly created for it.

In 1800, the attention of English speculators was turned to South America, and especially attracted to Buenos Ayres by its river, and its probable future. In 1810, Buenos Ayres was filled with partisans of the revolution, bitterly hostile to anything originating in Spain or any part of Europe. A germ of progress, then, was still alive west of the La Plata. The Spanish colonies cared nothing for commerce or navigation. The Rio de la Plata was of small importance to them. The Spanish disdained it and its banks. As time went on, the river proved to have deposited its sediment of wealth upon those banks, but very little of Spanish spirit or Spanish modes of government. Commercial activity had brought thither the spirit and the general ideas of Europe; the vessels which frequented the waters of the port brought books from all quarters, and news of all the political events of the world. It is to be observed that Spain had no other commercial city upon the Atlantic coast. The war with England hastened the emancipation of men's minds and awakened among them a sense of their own importance as a state. Buenos Ayres was like a child, which, having conquered a giant, fondly deems itself a hero, and is ready to undertake greater adventures. The Social Contract flew from hand to hand. Mably and Raynal were the oracles of the press; Robespierre and the Convention the approved models. Buenos Ayres thought itself a continuation of Europe, and if it did not frankly confess that its spirit and tendencies were French and North American, it denied its Spanish origin on the ground that the Spanish Government had patronized it only after it was full grown. The revolution brought with it armies and glory, triumphs and reverses, revolts and seditions. But Buenos Ayres, amidst all these fluctuations, displayed the revolutionary energy with which it is endowed. Bolivar was everything; Venezuela was but the pedestal for that colossal figure. Buenos Ayres was a whole city of revolutionists—Belgrano, Rondeau, San Martin, Alvear; and the hundred generals in command of its armies were its instruments; its arms, not its head nor its trunk. It cannot be said in the Argentine Republic that such a general was the liberator of the country; but only that the Assembly, Directory, Congress, or government of such or such a period, sent a given general to do this thing or that. Communication with all the European nations was ever, even from the outset, more complete here than in any other part of Spanish America; and now, in ten years' time (but only, be it understood, in Buenos Ayres), there comes to pass radical replacement of the Spanish by the European spirit. We have only to take a list of the residents in and about Buenos Ayres to see how many natives of the country bear English, French, German, or Italian surnames. The organization of society, in accordance with the new ideas with which it was impregnated, began in 1820; and the movement continued until Rivadavia was placed at the head of the government. Hitherto Rodriguez and Las Heras had been laying the usual foundations of free governments. Amnesty laws, individual security, respect for property, the responsibility of civil authority, equilibrium of powers, public education, everything, in fine, was in peaceful course of establishment when Rivadavia came from Europe, brought Europe as it were, but Europe was yet undervalued. Buenos Ayres—and that means, of course, the Argentine Republic—was to realize what republican France could not realize, what the English aristocracy did not even wish for, what despotic Europe wanted still less. This was not an illusion of Rivadavia's; it was the general thought of the city, its spirit, and its tendency.

Parties were divided, not by ideas essentially opposed to each other, but by the greater or less extent of their aims. And how else could it have been with a people which in only fourteen years had given England a lesson, overrun half the continent, equipped ten armies, fought a hundred pitched battles, been everywhere victorious, taken part in all events, set at nought all traditions, tested all theories, ventured upon everything and succeeded in everything; which was still vigorous, growing rich, progressing in civilization? What was to ensue, when the basis of government, the political creeds received from Europe, were vitiated by errors, absurd and deceptive theories, and unsound principles? for the native politicians who were as yet without any definite knowledge of political organization, could not be expected to know more than the great men of Europe. I desire to call attention to the significance of this fact. The study of constitutions, races, and creeds, in short, history, has now diffused a certain amount of practical knowledge which warns us against the glitter of theories based upon a priori conceptions; but previous to 1820, nothing of that had transpired in the European world. France was roused into insurrection by the paradoxes of the Social Contract; Buenos Ayres was similarly roused; Montesquieu designated three powers, and immediately we had three; Benjamin Constant and Bentham annulled power; here they declared it originally null; Say and Smith preached free-trade; "commercial liberty," we repeated; Buenos Ayres confessed and believed all that the learned world of Europe believed and confessed. Not till after the revolution of 1830 in France, and its incomplete results, did the Social Sciences take a new direction and illusions begin to be dispelled. From that time European books began to come to us, which demonstrated that Voltaire had not much reason, and that Rousseau was a sophist, and Mably and Raynal anarchists; that there were no three powers, nor any Social Contract, etc. From that time we learned something of races, of tendencies, of national habits, of historical antecedents. Tocqueville revealed to us for the first time the secret of North America; Sismondi laid bare the emptiness of constitutions; Thierry, Michelet, and Guizot, gave us the spirit of history; the revolution of 1830, all the hollowness of the constitutionalism of Benjamin Constant; the Spanish revolution, all that is incomplete and behindhand in our own race. Of what then were Rivadavia and Buenos Ayres accused? Of not knowing more than the European savans who were their guides? On the other side, how was it possible not to embrace with ardor the general ideas of a people who had contributed so much and so well to make the revolution general? How bridle the imaginations of the inhabitants of an illimitable plain bordered by a river whose opposite bank could not be seen a step from Europe, not knowing even its own traditions, indeed without having them in reality; a new, suddenly improvised people, which from the very cradle had heard itself called great?

Thus elevated, and hitherto flattered by fortune, Buenos Ayres set about making a constitution for itself and the Republic, just as it had undertaken to liberate itself and all South America: that is, eagerly, uncompromisingly, and without regard to obstacles. Rivadavia was the personification of this poetical, Utopian spirit which prevailed. He therefore continued the work of Las Heras upon the large scale necessary for a great American State—a republic. He brought over from Europe men of learning for the press and for the professor's chair, colonies for the deserts, ships for the rivers, freedom for all creeds, credit and the nation bank to encourage trade, and all the great social theories of the day for the formation of his government. In a word, he brought a second Europe, which was to be established in America, and to accomplish in ten years what elsewhere had required centuries. Nor was this project altogether chimerical; all his administrative creations still exist, except those which the barbarism of Rosas found in its way. Freedom of conscience, advocated by the chief clergy of Buenos Ayres, has not been repressed; the European population is scattered on farms throughout the country, and takes arms of its own accord to resist the only obstacle in the way of the wealth offered by the soil. The rivers only need to be freed from governmental restrictions to become navigable, and the national bank, then firmly established, has saved the people from the poverty to which the tyrant would have brought them. And, above all, however fanciful and impracticable that great system of government may have been, it was at least easy and endurable for the people; and, notwithstanding the assertions of misinformed men, Rivadavia never shed a drop of blood, nor destroyed the property of any one; but voluntarily descended from the Presidency to poverty and exile. Rosas, by whom he was so calumniated; might easily have been drowned in the blood of his own victims; and the forty millions of dollars from the national treasury, with the fifty millions from private fortunes which were consumed in ten years of the long war provoked by his brutalities, would have been employed by the "fool—the dreamer—Rivadavia," in building canals, cities, and useful public buildings. Then let this man, who died for his country, have the glory of representing the highest aspirations of European civilization, and leave to his adversaries that of displaying South American barbarism in its most odious light. For Rosas and Rivadavia are the two extremes of the Argentine Republic, connecting it with savages through the pampas, and with Europe through the River La Plata.

I am not making the eulogy, but the apotheosis of Rivadavia and his party, which has ceased to exist as a political element of the Argentine Republic, though Rosas persists in calling his present enemies "Unitarios." The old union party, like that of the Girondists, disbanded many years ago; but with all its impossibilities and fanciful illusions it had much that was noble and great to which the succeeding generation should do justice. Many "of those men are still among us, though no longer as an organized party; they are the remains of the Argentine Republic, as noble and as venerable as those of Napoleon's empire. These Unitarios of the year 1825 form a distinct class of men, recognized by their manners, tone of voice, and opinions. A Unitario would be known among a thousand by his stately bearing, his somewhat haughty manner of speaking, and his positive gestures; on the eve of a battle he will pause to discuss a question logically, or to establish some new legal formality; for legal formulas are the outward worship which he offers to his idols—the Constitution and individual rights. His religion is the future of the Republic, whose image, sublime and colossal, is ever before him, covered with the mantle of its past glory. Never was there a generation so enterprising, so gifted with reasoning and deductive powers, and so wanting in practical common sense. A Unitario will not believe in the evident success of his enemies. He has such faith in the greatness of his cause, that neither exile, nor poverty, nor lapse of years can weaken his enthusiasm; and in calmness of mind and in energy of soul he is infinitely superior to the present generation. These men also excel us in ceremonious politeness and refinement of manner; for conventionalities are more and more disregarded among us as democracy progresses, and it is now difficult to realize the culture and refinement of society in Buenos Ayres before 1828. Europeans who went there found themselves, as it were, still in Europe, in the saloons of Paris; nothing was wanting, not even the insolence of the Parisian élegant, which was well imitated by the same class of young men in Buenos Ayres.

I have been particular in mentioning these little things in order to give an idea of the period when the Republic was in the process of formation, and of its different elements struggling for precedence. On one side Cordova, Spanish in education, in literature, and in religion, conservative and strongly opposed to all innovations; and on the other, Buenos Ayres, revolutionary by nature, ready for any change and progress.

These were the types of the two parties that divided every city; and I doubt if there is another such phenomenon in America; that is, two parties, conservative and revolutionary, retrograde and progressive, each represented by a city having its own peculiar form of civilization, and receiving opinions from entirely different sources: Cordova, from Spain, the Councils, the Commentators, the Digest; Buenos Ayres, from Bentham, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and French literature in general.

To these elements of antagonism must be added another not less important, namely, the want of any national bond after the provinces became independent of Spain. When government authority is removed from one centre to another, time is necessary for its firm establishment.

The "Republican" recently declared that "government is no more than a compact between the governors and the governed." Evidently there are still many Unitarios among us! Government is in reality founded upon, the unpremeditated consent which a nation gives to a permanent fact. Where there is deliberation, there is no authority. This transition state is called a confederation. Out of each revolution and consequent change of government, different nations derive their ideas and modes of confederation.

I will explain myself. When Ferdinand VII. was driven from Spain, government—that permanent fact—ceased to exist; and Spain was formed into provincial assemblies which denied the authority of those who governed in the name of the king. This was the Spanish Confederation. When the news reached America, the South American provinces revolted from Spain, and being divided into sections, formed the South American Confederation. From Buenos Ayres came at the end of the contest, four states, Bolivia, Paraguay, Banda Oriental, and the Argentine Republic.; these formed the Confederation of the Viceroyalty. Finally, the Argentine Republic was divided, not as formerly into districts, but according to its cities, and so became a confederation of cities.

It is not that the word confederation signifies separation, but that when separation has already taken place, it expresses the union of the different parts. The Argentine Republic was at this crisis social, and many persons of note in the cities believed that, for mere convenience, or whenever an individual or a community felt no respect for the nominal government, a new confederation might be formed. Here then was another apple of discord in the Republic, and the two parties, after having been called "Royalists" and "Patriots," "Congresistas" and "Executivistas," "Conservaties," and "Liberals," now bore the names of "Federales" and "Unitarios."^[6] Perhaps, to finish the list, I should give the name bestowed upon the latter party by Don Juan Manuel Rosas, that is, "salvajes inmundos Unitarios."

But the Argentine Republic is so situated geographically, that it is destined to a consolidation, whatever Rosas may say to the contrary. Its continuous plain, its rivers confined to one outlet, and therefore to one port, force it inevitably to be "one and indivisible" Rivadavia, who well understood the necessities of the country, advised the provinces to unite under a common constitution, and to make a national port of Buenos Ayres. Aguero, his supporter in Congress, said to the citizens of Buenos Ayres, "Let us voluntarily give to the provinces what, sooner or later, they will claim by force." The prophecy failed in one respect; the provinces did not claim the port of Buenos Ayres by force of arms, but by force of the barbarism which they sent upon her in Facundo and Rosas. Buenos Ayres feels all the effects of the barbarism, while the port has been of no use to the provinces.

I have been obliged to explain all these antecedents in order to continue the life of Juan Facundo Quiroga; for, though it seems ridiculous to say it, Facundo was the rival of Rivadavia. Everything disconnected with these men was of little importance, and left no impression. There were in the Republic two parties: one in Buenos Ayres, supported by the Liberals in the provinces; the other originating in the provinces and supported by the provincial commanders who had obtained possession of cities. One of these powers was civilized, constitutional, European; the other barbarous, arbitrary, South American.

These two parties had reached their full development, and only needed a word to begin the contest; one, as the revolutionary party, was already called "Unitario," the opposite party assumed the name of "Federal," without well understanding it.

But that barbarian party or power was scattered throughout the Republic, in the provinces, and in the Indian territories, and a strong arm was needed to establish it firmly in a compact form, and Quiroga offered his for the work.

Though the Argentine gaucho has some qualities common to all shepherds, he has strong local attachments. Whether he belongs in Buenos Ayres, Santa Fé, Cordova, or the Llanos, all his aspirations are confined to his own province; and he is an enemy or a stranger to all the others. These provinces are like different tribes ready to make war upon one another. Lopez, as governor of Santa Fé, cared nothing for what was passing around him, except occasionally when obliged to drive out troublesome intruders from his territory. But as these provinces had points of contact contact, nothing could prevent them from finally joining in a common interest, thus bringing about that consolidation which they had so struggled against.

As I have already said, Quiroga's wandering life in youth gave rise to his future ambition; for, though a gaucho, he was troubled with no local attachment. He was born in Rioja, but educated in San Juan, and lived afterwards both in Mendoza and Buenos Ayres. He was acquainted with the whole Republic, and his ambition had no narrow limits. Master of Rioja, he delighted to present himsslf clothed with authority in that town, where he had learned to read; in another city, which was the scene of his boyish escapadas; and, in another still, where he had distinguished himself by his prison exploit. If it was for his interest to leave a province, he was not detained by his affections; and, unlike Lopez or Ibarra, who only cared to defend their own possessions, he was fond of attacking his neighbor's territory and taking it into his own hands.

1. Eighty-five yards in Montevideo, one hundred and twenty-seven in Buenos Ayres.
2. A similar order of things exists to this day in the city of Havana.
3. Benthancito, the termination expressing derision.

4. Concha.

   Liniers.

   Allende.

   Moreno

   Orellana.

   Rodriguez.

5. On going over the pages of this first historical essay, the author regrets certain defects which cannot be expunged without recasting the whole work, for it would thus be impossible to preserve the thread of the ideas. The heat of the early years of exile, the impossibility of verifying details in such circumstances, and the prejudices of party feeling, have left some indelible traces. The description of Cordova is stained with this capital vice, and the author would willingly expunge it, if it did not contain a certain malicious exaggeration which make striking the contrast of the modern spirit which characterized Buenos Ayres in 1825. But the author owes to the friendly frankness of Dr. Alsina, corrections upon this and several other points, which as a point of honor as well as an excuse, he submits to the examination of the reader, thus making every possible reparation for error without destroying the spirit of the original text. "I seem to see," he says in these notes, "a capital defect in this book, that of exaggeration, independent of a certain vivacity, if not in the ideas, in their allocution. If you do not propose to write a romance or an epic, but a veritable history, political, social, and military, your rule must be not to depart from rigid historical exactness, and exaggeration is inconsistent with this. You show a penchant for systems, and in social science, systems do not constitute the best means of arriving at the truth. When the mind is occupied with a previous idea, and proposes to make that triumph in its demonstration of it, it exposes itself to original errors without being aware of it. Then instead of proceeding analytically, instead of examining each fact in itself, to see what can be deduced from it, and from these collected deductions and observations, to bring out a general deduction or result, instead of proceeding thus, a writer uses synthesis, that is to say, he poses a certain leading idea, reviews whatever facts present themselves, not to examine them philosophically and in detail, but to make them prove his favorite idea, and to construct by their means the edifice of his system. The natural result of this is, that when he meets with a fact which supportg his idea, he exaggerates and amplifies it, and when he finds another which does not square well with his system, or which contradicts it, he presents only one aspect of it, disfigures it, or interprets it in his own way; hence forced analogies and applications, inexact or partial judgments of men or events, and the generalizations with which a writer deduces a rule or a doctrine from an individual, and often accidental fact, perhaps insignificant in itself. All this is a necessity of systems. It is necessary to sacrifice a great deal to them. You propose to show the active struggle between civilization and barbarism, a struggle where germs began to move toward development long years ago, and which during years blindly excited the struggle between country and city, in which by a necessary law and almost by fatality, the latter triumphed, and ought to have triumphed. I think there may be truth at the bottom of this idea, although it has not any in my humble opinion. "You treat with undeserved harshness that poor city of Cordova. You do not cite facts that justify your general assertion, made so strongly and severely. To recall the crime of Bustos in 1820 would be inopportune, that crime proves something else, but not that. That Liniers and other distinguished men, almost all Spaniards, acted like Spaniards in 1810, is not astonishing, and their rencontre at Cordova should not be imputed to a love of royalty in the people any more than the appearance of that kind of acrostic which you copy, and which might have been the work of an individual, should be imputed to the same thing. These proofs go out of the limits of the circumspection of history to justify an accusation so positive and so general. There were families of the Spanish party there as in all the provinces, without excluding that of Buenos Ayres, and this was natural. After it was delivered from Liniers and his associates, what fact reveals the opposition or dissent of Cordova to the revolution? What does Cordova do less than any other of the provinces where the Spanish armies did not go? What more have the others done than Cordova? It received with decision the first patriotic army, and contributed what it could to it. From 1810 it furnished many soldiers; from 1810 it furnished many men and young men who became excellent officers; it gave Valey, who died gloriously at Desaguadero; also Leeva, Bustos, Julian, and José María Paz, J. G. Echevarria, who died for liberty in 1831, as you say further on; it gave my client Colonel Rojas, who made his debut at Dehesa, and others whose names I do not now remember. Cordova sent its deputies to the first Junta, and has since sent them to all the national bodies. In what other way would you have a province take part in the revolution? In what manner have others taken part in it?
   "Alsina."
6. Federales, those who held to a confederation of the old provinces, or a union of states. Unitarios, those who advocated a consolidated central government.