ment, (if one should ever exist,) would attempt to establish a still stronger line of demarcation between themselves, and the Castes, than that drawn by a government, which had no interest in favouring either party, and only aimed at keeping down all. The events of the last seventeen years have proved these fears to be unfounded. From the first breaking out of the Revolution, the Creoles were obliged to court the alliance of the mixed classes, and in all their proclamations we find them representing their own cause, and that of the Aborigines, as the same. The distinctions of castes were all swallowed up in the great, vital distinction, of Americans, and Europeans; against whom, supported, as they were, by the whole force of Spain, and holding, as they did, almost all the public employments in the country, nothing could have been done except by a general coalition of the natives. Hence the apparent absurdity of hearing the descendants of the first conquerors, (for such the Creoles, strictly speaking, were,) gravely accusing Spain of all the atrocities, which their own ancestors had committed; invoking the names of Moctezuma and Atahualpa;[1] expatiating upon the miseries which the Indians had undergone, and endeavouring to discover some affinity
- ↑ Vide the Cuadro Historico of Carlos Bustamante, passim; and the first Manifesto of the Congress of Buenos Ayres, in which the massacre of Caxamalca is introduced, as one of the pleas of independence.
