by the Spaniards. With regard to the first, it is un necessary to enlarge upon what has been said in the previous volume;[1] but the question of political, military, and ecclesiastical preferments requires consideration, inasmuch as the exclusion of Creoles from them is as strenuously denied by the advocates of the Spanish faction as it is emphatically asserted by those of the creole class. Although the Spanish American was eligible to all offices, from the lowest to the viceregal dignity, the higher were almost exclusively filled by men from Spain;[2] and in spite of the asseverations to the contrary,[3] it cannot be denied that promotion to important positions was practically closed to American Spaniards. No stronger evidence can be found than in the opposition to American representation in the Spanish government, and the public expressions of scorn and odium heaped upon the race in the Cádiz periodicals of that time.
The Spanish rulers were determined that New Spain should be ruled exclusively by Spaniards, howsoever the published policy of the nation might be affected thereby; and their opportunities of obtaining political
- ↑ Hist. Mex., vol. iii. 742-4, this series. See also Cancelada, Tel. Amer., 146-55.
- ↑ Walton, the author of Present State of the Spanish Colonies, London, 1810, secretary to the expedition which captured the city of Santo Domingo from the French, and resident British agent there, in his Exposé on the Dimensions of Spanish America, London, 1814, states, on page 47, 'that on examining authentic records, it results: that from the period of the first settlement up to the year 1810, out of 166 viceroys and 588 captain-generals, governors, and presidents who have governed in Spanish America, in all 754, only 18 have been Creoles, and these few merely in consequence of their having been educated in Spain.' Only three viceroys of Mexico down to 1813 were Creoles. Alaman, Mej., i. 12.
- ↑ Torrente, Hist. Rev. Hispano-Amer., i. 72-4, quotes observations made by ' un Americano del sur,' who stoutly maintains the generosity 'de una nacion que fiaba a americanos los Vireinatos, Capitanias generales, Presidencias, Magistraturas, Arzobispados i Opispados;' and gives a list of European and American officials for the year 1811, in which he shows that 338 were of the latter class and only 76 of the former. He moreover enumerates the political, military, and ecclesiastical positions held by the Creoles during the same year. But I must remark that the appointments conferred upon Creoles at the commencement of the nineteenth century afford no criterion of the proportion which prevailed during the two preceding centuries. Spain felt her self compelled to open the doors of promotion in the hope of allaying the gathering storm. Cancelada, Tel. Amer., 265-73, argues that the Creoles were more favored than the Spaniards in the matter of appointments.
