third of what they are at present, agriculture, commerce and morals, would be greatly benefited by the change.

The Spaniards are extremely prudent in their undertakings.

It is a pretty striking inconsistency in the character of the Creole and European Spaniards, established in America, that by their ordinary behaviour in society they do not appear to verify what their passion for litigation would seem to announce. Instead of being petulant, hasty, and passionate, they are mild, kind, affable and excessively polite. They are not remarkable for boldness in their affairs, much less for rashness. All their undertakings are conducted with that kind of timidity which they call prudence. They leave little to chance, or to say the truth, they leave nothing to it. Hence it happens that their successes never excite astonishment, nor their reverses despondency. If they do not amass rapid fortunes, their ruin is neither frequent nor precipitate, It is true, ambition would not be satisfied with such moderate maxims of conduct. They have, however, an air of philosophy, which gives them the appearance of wisdom; at least we cannot deny, that to the citizen, they present the advantage of preserving the tranquillity of his own breast, to the state, assurance of the stability of the government, and to the mother country, the certainty of the duration of her sovereignty. In fact, it is not in the natural order of things, that men, habituated to grope in all the transactions of

private life, should so far depart from the usual tenor of their conduct, as to lift up their profane hands against a government, which they were accustomed from ther infancy to regard as sacred. Again, if by an extraordinary event, there should start up one of those rare geniuses, which nature produces in political convulsions, who would join enterprise to talents, and ambition to enterprise, his disorganizing efforts would prove abortive from the indifference of the people, from the religious respect which they entertain for the laws and magistrates, and particularly from the interest which binds to the royal authority, all the Spanish colonists, either on account of the offices which they hold or solicit, or the distinctions which they expect to be conferred upon them.

Conspiracy of Venezuela.

Notwithstanding the powerful supports of the Spanish sovereignty in the West-Indies, it was in the year 1787, on the point of experiencing a dangerous concussion in the province of Venezuela. It is true, that a multiplicity of circumstances tended, at that period, to form a conjuncture which is never likely to recur, and combined to give the conspiracy the serious character which it assumed.

Causes.

The principles blazoned on the victorious standard of the French Republic, in its early career, too simple not to be understood, too natural not to be adopt

ed, were displayed, in order to be admired in the four quarters of the world. The morality of the objects which they contemplated, was so noble, so persuasive, that without the aid of experience, which has demonstrated their defects, human wisdom would never have resolved to arrest their progress or prescribe their limits. It is not, then, at all astonishing, that in Terra-Firma they had kindled a flame, in the breasts of some characters who, constitutionally ardent, and participating the electric shock which then pervaded the greater part of the world, seriously conceived the project of reducing them to practice. The opportunity might appear the more favourable, as Spain, exhausted by the war which she had lately supported against France, and exhausting herself still more by that in which she was actually engaged against England, found herself too much cramped in her European operations, and too closely beset by the ardour of the navy of her enemy, to think it adviseable, even if it were practicable, to expose her own coasts, daily menaced by the enemy, by withdrawing her forces, and sending them to America, in order to defend her rights from attack and her sovereignty from outrage. It was, on the other hand, probable, that England would protect, in Terra-Firma, insurrection and disorganization, which, from a policy not easy to be accounted for, she has, during the last war, every where provoked, where her arms were not rendered subservient to the gratification of her ardent passion for conquest.

Another more immediate cause might afford to the factious the hope of being able to engage the city

of Caraccas in a revolution. The seeds of it seem to have been planted in 1796, by a measure of police, which was executed in so shocking a manner as to rouse into opposition all the unhappy persons whom it oppressively affected. The government was already assailed by detached crowds of people, and would, in a short time, have been attacked by the whole multitude, had not the captain-general, Carbonel, in opposition to the sentiments of the audience, taken the decisive resolution to redress the grievances of the people, because he thought their complaints were founded on justice. This chief, by the wisdom of his arrangements, had the glory to appease the tumult, quiet the clamours, and dissipate the uneasiness, which generally prevailed. All returned to order, but it was possible some animosity might still have remained.

Conspiracy formed by three Prisoners of State.

Such was the disposition of men and things, when three state-prisoners, condemned, in Spain, for revolutionary crimes, to be shut up for the remainder of their lives in the casemates of Goyara, arrived at the place of their destination. They all had the talent of persuasion, but one of them possessed it in a very eminent degree. They announced themselves as martyrs of liberty, and victims of tyranny; and by frequently repeating their story, succeeded in giving it an air of probability, so as to interest in their fate those who were entrusted with their keeping. They obtained, in their confinement, all the indulgence which VOL. I.

could be given by the officers and soldiers who surrounded them. They were permitted to come out of their casemates in order to enjoy the benefit of the air, and without any restraint to address an audience well disposed to listen to their communications. The confidence and docility which they observed in the behaviour of their keepers inspired boldness, and foreseeing that their seditious doctrine might at least be the means of liberating them from the punishment to which they were condemned, they formed the resolution of realizing their revolutionary maxims in the province of Venezuela. Their design was at first confined to the knowledge of a small number of persons, whose principles were perfectly adapted to such an enterprise. They artfully sounded those whose opinions were not known, in order to avoid the danger of being denounced, and they admitted proselytes of all colours, classes, occupations and conditions of life, that the insurrection might be general, and solely directed against the mother country.

The state-prisoners, in the beginning, did not doubt of the possibility of success. They had reserved for themselves, as might be expected, the first offices of the new republic. But, when they observed that their enthusiasm was not communicated to the great body of the people, that the number of the conspirators did not increase, that the cold and listless character of the people of Venezuela, was not susceptible of any degree of effervescence, they ceased to indulge hopes of deriving any other advantage from the sedition which they fomented, than to effect their escape, and, from that period, to this object