"I have the honor of informing the deputy-governor that Colonel Manuel Dorrego has just been shot by my order, in front of the regiments which compose this division. History will judge impartially whether Señor Dorrego should have lived or died; or whether in sacrificing him for the peace of a city, brought to grief by him, I could have had any other motive than that of the public good. Let the people of Buenos Ayres be persuaded that the death of Colonel Dorrego is the greatest sacrifice that I could make for them.
"I salute, Señor, the minister with all due consideration.
"JUAN LAVALLE."
Was Lavalle wrong? It is needless to add another affirmative in support of those who, after seeing the consequences, assumed the easy task of criticizing his motives. If an evil exists, it is in things not in persons. When Cæsar was assassinated, he re-lived more terrible than ever in Octavius. Lavalle did not then know hat in killing the body he could not kill the spirit; and that political personages take their character and existence from the ideas, interests, and ends of the party they represent. If Lavalle had shot Rosas instead of Dorrego, perhaps he would have saved the world from a great scandal, humanity from a great opprobrium, and the Republic from much blood and many tears; but, even if Rosas had been shot, the provinces would still have had representatives; and there would have been only the change of one historical picture for another. But what people pretend to ignore to-day, is, that—notwithstanding the purely personal responsibility of the deed, as far as Lavalle is concerned—the death of Dorrego was a necessary consequence of the prevailing ideas of the time; and that by this act the soldier who was brave enough to defy history, only accomplished
