Ihat, in this manner, your petitioner plays no unfair game against the world; his stake being life itself, so to speak, (for the penalty is death by starvation,) and the world's stake nothing till once it see the dice thrown; so that in any case the world cannot lose. That in the happy and long-doubtful event of the game's going in his favour, your petitioner submits that the small winnings thereof do belong to him or his, and that no other mortal has justly either part or lot in them at all, now, henceforth, or for ever. May it therefore please your Honourable And your petitioner will ever pray. DR. FRANCIA.* [FOREIGN QUarterly Review.] THE confused South American revolution, | his fame. Melancholy lithographs represent and set of revolutions, like the South American to us a long-faced, square-browed man; of continent itself, is doubtless a great confused stern, considerate, consciously considerate aspect, phenomenon; worthy of better knowledge than mildly aquiline form of nose; with terrible men yet have of it. Several books, of which angularity of jaw; and dark deep eyes, somewe here name a few known to us, have been what too close together, (for which latter cirwritten on the subject; but bad books mostly, cumstance we earnestly hope the lithograph and productive of almost no effect. The heroes alone is to blame :) this is Liberator Bolivar :of South America have not yet succeeded in a man of much hard fighting, hard riding, of picturing any image of themselves, much less manifold achievements, distresses, heroisms any true image of themselves, in the Cis-Atlan- and histrionisms in this world; a many-countic mind or memory. selled, much-enduring man; now dead and gone :-of whom, except that melancholy lithograph, the cultivated European public knows as good as nothing. Yet did he not fly hither and thither, often in the most desperate manner, with wild cavalry clad in blankets, with War of Liberation, "to the death?" Clad in blankets, ponchos the South Americans call them: it is a square blanket, with a short slit in the centre, which you draw over your head, and so leave hanging: many a liberative cavalier has ridden, in those hot climates, without further dress at all; and fought, handsomely too, wrapping the blanket round his arm, when it came to the charge. Iturbide," the Napoleon of Mexico," a great man in that narrow country, who was he? He made the thrice-celebrated “Plan of Iguala:" a constitution of no continuance. He became Emperor of Mexico, most serene " Augustin I.:" was deposed, banished to Leghorn, to London; decided on returning;-landed on the shore at Tampico, and was there met, and shot: this, in a vague sort, is what the world knows of the Napoleon of Mexico, most serene Augustin the First, most unfortunate Augustin the Last. He did himself publish memoirs or memorials, but few can read them. Oblivion, and the deserts of Panama, have swallowed this brave Don Augustin: vate caruit sacro. And Bolivar, "the Washington of Columbia," Liberator Bolivar, he too is gone without With such cavalry, and artillery and infantry to match, Bolivar has ridden, fighting all the way, through torrid deserts, hot mud swamps, through ice-chasms beyond the curve of per*1. Funeral Discourse delivered on occasion of celebrat-petual frost,―more miles than Ulysses ever ing the obsequies of his late Excellency the Perpetual Dic-sailed: let the coming Homers take note of it. tator of the Republic of Paraguay, the Citizen Dr. José Gaspar Francia, by Citizen the Rev. Manuel Antonia Perez, of the Church of the Incarnation, on the 20th of October, 1840. In the "British Packet and Argentine News." No. 813. Buenos Ayres: March 19, 1842. 2. Essai Historique sur la Révolution de Paraguay, et le Gouvernement Dictatorial du Docteur Francia. Par MM. Rengger et Longchamp. 2de édition. Paris, 1827. 3. Letters on Paraguay. By J. P. and W. P. Robertson. 2 vols. Second edition. London, 1839. 4. Francia's Reign of Terror. By the same. London, 1829. 5. Letters on South America. By the same. 3 vols. London 1843. 2 vols. London, 1826. 7. Memoirs of General Miller, in the Service of the Republic of Peru. 2 vols. 2d edition. London, 1829. A Statement of some of the principal Events in the Public Life of Augustin de Iturbide: written by Himself London, 1843. He has marched over the Andes more than once; a feat analogous to Hannibal's; and seemed to think little of it. Often beaten, banished from the firm land, he always returned again, truculently fought again. He gained in the Cumana regions the "immortal victory" of Carababo and several others; under him was gained the finishing "immortal victory" of Ayacucho in Peru, where Old Spain, for the last time, burnt powder in those latitudes, and then fled without return. He was Dictator, Liberator, almost emperor, if he had lived. Some three times over did he, in solemn Columbian parliament, lay down his Dictator ship with Wasnington eloquence; and as often, 1 on pressing request, take it up again, being a | the esplanade there. The ceremonies and de man indispensable. Thrice, or at least twice, liberations, as described by General Miller, are did he, in different places, painfully construct somewhat surprising; still more the concluda Free Constitution; consisting of "two cham- ing civic feast, which lasts for three days, which bers, and a supreme governor for life with consists of horses' flesh for the solid part, and liberty to name his successor," the reasonablest horses' blood with ardent spirits ad libitum for democratic constitution you could well con- the liquid, consumed with such alacrity, with struct; and twice, or at least once, did the such results as one may fancy. However, the people, on trial, declare it disagreeable. He women had prudently removed all the arms was of old, well known in Paris; in the disso- beforehand; nay, "five or six of these poor lute, the philosophico-political and other cir-women, taking it by turns, were always found cies there. He has shone in many a gay in a sober state, watching over the rest;" so Parisian soirée, this Simon Bolivar; and he, that comparatively little mischief was done, in his later years, in autumn, 1825, rode and only "one or two” deaths by quarrel took triumphant into Potosi and the fabulous Inca place. Cities, with clouds of feathered Indians somersetting and warwhopping round him*—and "as the famed Cerro, metalliferous Mountain, came in sight, the bells all pealed out, and there was a thunder of artillery," says General Miller! If this is not a Ulysses, Polytlas and Polymetis, a much enduring and many counselled man; where was there one? Truly a Ulysses whose history were worth its ink, had the Homer that could do it, made his appearance! Of General San Martin, too, there will be something to be said. General San Martin, when we last saw him, twenty years ago or -through the organs of the authentic Samast Mr. Miers, had a handsome house in Mendoza, and "his own portrait, as I remarked, hung up between those of Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington." In Mendoza, cheerful, mudbuilt, whitewashed Town, seated at the eastern base of the Andes, " with its shady public walk well paved and swept;" 100king out pleasantly, on this hand, over wide horizons of Pampa wilderness; pleasantly on that, to the Rocky-chain, Cordillera they call it, of the sky-piercing Mountains, capt in snow, or with volcanic fumes issuing from them: there dwelt General Ex-Generalissimo San Martin, ruminating past adventures over half the world; and had his portrait hung up between Napoleon's and the Duke of Wellington's. Did the reader ever hear of San Martin's march over the Andes in Chile? It is a feat worth looking at; comparable, most likely, to Hannibal's march over the Alps, while there was yet no Simplon or Mont-Cénis highway; and it transacted itself in the year 1817. South American armies think little of picking their way through the gullies of the Andes; so the Buenos-Ayres people, having driven out their own Spaniards, and established the reign of freedom, though in a precarious manner, thought it were now good to drive the Spaniards out of Chile, and establish the reign of freedom there also instead: whereupon San Martin, commander at Mendoza, was appointed to do it. By way of preparation, for he began from afar, San Martin, while an army is getting ready at Mendoza, assembles "at the fort of San Carlos by the Aguanda river," some days' journey to the south, all attainable tribes of he Pehuenche Indians, to a solemn Palaver, so they name it, and civic entertainment, on • Memoirs of General Miller. Few The Pehuenches having drunk their ardentwater and horses' blood in this manner, and sworn eternal friendship to San Martin, went home, and-communicated to his enemies, across the Andes, the road he meant to take. This was what San Martin had foreseen and meant, the knowing man! He hastened his preparations, got his artillery slung on poles, his men equipt with knapsacks and haversacks, his mules in readiness; and, in all stillness, set forth from Mendoza by unother road. things in late war, according to General Mil ler, have been more noteworthy than this march. The long straggling line of soldiers, ix thousand and odd, with their quadrupeds and baggage, winding through the heart of the Andes, breaking for a brief moment the old abysmal solitudes!-For you farre along, on some narrow roadway, through stony laby rinths; huge rock-mountains hanging over your head, on this hand; and under your feet, on that, the roar of mountain-cataracts, horror of bottomless chasms;-the very winds and echoes howling on you in an almost preternatural manner. Towering rock-barriers rise sky-high before you, and behind you, and around you; intricate the outgate! The roadway is narrow; footing none of the best. Sharp turns there are, where it will behove you to mind your paces; one false step, and you will need no second; in the gloomy jaws of the abyss you vanish, and the spectral winds howl requiem. Somewhat better are the suspension bridges, made of bamboo and leather, though they swing like see-saws: men are stationed with lassos, to gin you dexterously, and fish you up from the torrent, if you trip there. Through this kind of country did San Martin march; straight towards San lago, to fight the Spaniards and deliver Chile. For ammunition wagons he had sorras, sledges, canoe shaped boxes, made of dried bull's-hide. His cannons were carried on the back of mules, each cannon on two mules judiciously harnessed: on the packsaddle of your foremost mule, there rested with firm girths a long strong pole; the other end of which (forked end, we suppose) rested, with like girths, on the packsaddle of the hindmost mule; your cannon was slung with leathern straps on this pole, and so travelled, swaying and dangling, yet moderately secure. In the knapsack of each soldier was eight days' provender, dried leef ground into snuff-powder, with a modicum of pepper, and a slight seasoning of biscuit of maizemeal; "store af onions, of garlic," was | buxom countenance, radiant with pepticity, not wanting: Paraguay tea could be boiled at good humour, and manifold effectuality in eventide, by fire of scrub-bushes, or almost peace and war! Of his battles and advenof rock-lichens or dried mule-dung. No further baggage was permitted: each soldier lay, at night, wrapt in his poncho, with his knapsack for pillow, under the canopy of heaven; lullabied by hard travail: and sank soon enough into steady nose-melody, into the foolishest rough colt-dance of unimaginable Dreams. Had he not left much behind him in the Pampas,-mother, mistress, what not; and was like to find somewhat, if he ever got across to Chile living? What an entity, one of those night-leaguers of San Martin; all steadily snoring there, in the heart of the Andes, under the eternal stars! Wayworn sentries with difficulty keep themselves awake: tired mules chew barley rations, or doze on three legs; the feeble watchfire will hardly kindle a cigar; Canopus and the Southern Cross glitter down; and all snores steadily, begirt by granite deserts, looked on by the constellations in that manner! San Martin's improvident soldiers ate out their week's rations almost in half the time; and for the last three days, had to rush on, spurred by hunger: this also the knowing San Martin had foreseen; and knew that they could bear it, these rugged Guachos of his; nay, that they would march all the faster for it. On the eighth day, hungry as wolves, swift and sudden as a torrent from the mountains, they disembogued; straight towards San Iago, to the astonishment of men;-struck the doubly astonished Spaniards into dite misgivings; and then, in pitched fight, after due manœuvres, into total defeat on the "Plains of Maypo," and again, positively for the last time, on the Plains or Heights of "Chacabuco;" and completed the "deliverance of Chile," as was thought, for ever and a day. Alas, the "deliverance of Chile was but commenced; very far from completed. Chile, after many more deliverances, up to this hour, is always but "delivered," from one set of evil doers to another set! San Martin's Manœuvres to liberate Peru, to unite Peru and Chile, and become some Washington-Napoleon of the same, did not prosper so well. The suspicion of mankind had to rouse itself; Liberator Bolivar had to be called in; and some revolution or two to take place in the interim. San Martin sees himself peremptorily, though with courtesy, complimented over the Andes again; and in due leisure, at Mendoza, hangs his portrait between Napoleon's and Wellington's. Mr. Miers considered him a fairspoken, obliging, if somewhat artful man. Might not the Chilenos as well have taken him for their Napoleon? They have gone farther, and, as yet, fared little better! The world-famous General O'Higgins, for example, he, after some revolution or two, became Director of Chile; but so terribly hampered by class-legislation," and the like, what could he make of it? Almost nothing! O'Higgins is clearly of Irish breed; and, though a Chileno born, and "natural son of Don Ambrosio O'Higgins, formerly the Spanish Viceroy of Chile," carries his Hibernianism in his very face. A most cheery, jovial, tures let some luckier epic writer sing o in him: Had you seen this road before it was made, You would lift both your hands and bless General Wade. It affects one with real pain to hear from Mr. Miers, that the war of liberty has half ruined these O'Higgins casuchas. Patriot soldiers, in want of more warmth than the charcoal box could yield, have not scrupled to tear down the door, doorcase, or whatever wooden thing could be come at, and burn it, on the spur of the moment. The storm-stayed traveller, who sometimes, in threatening weather, has to linger here for days, "for fifteen days together," does not lift both his hands, and bless the Patriot soldier! Nay, it appears, the O'Higgins roads, even in the plain country, have not, of late years, been repaired, or in the least attended to, SG distressed was the finance department; and are now fast verging towards impassability and the condition of mule-tracks again. What a set of animals are men and Chilenos If an O'Higgins did not now and then appear among them, what would become of the unfortunates i Can you wonder that an O'Higgins sometimes loses temper with them; snuts the persuasive outspread hand, clutching some sharpest hide whip, some terrible sword of justice or gallows Miera. lasso there with, instead,—and becomes a Dr. Francia now and then! Both the O'Higgins and Francia, it seems probal e, are phases of the same character; both, one begins to fear, are indispensable from time to time, in a world inhabited by men and (ilenos! of Man; under the most unpropitious circum stances; and have hitherto got only to the length we see! Nay now, it seems, they do possess "universities," which are at least schools with other than monk teachers: they have got libraries, though as yet almost nobody reads them, and our friend Miers, re peatedly knocking at all doors of the Grand Chile National Library, could never to this hour discover where the key lay, and had to content himself with looking in through the windows. Miers, as already hinted, desiderates unspeakable improvements in Chile;desiderates, indeed, as the basis of all, an immense increase of soap-and-water. Yes, thou sturdy Miers, dirt is decidedly to be removed, whatever improvements, temporal or spiritual, may be intended next? According to Miers, the open, still more the secret personal nastitowards the sublime. Finest silks, gold brocades, pearl necklaces, and diamond ear-drops, are no security against it: alas, all is not gold that glitters; somewhat that glitters is mere putrid fish-skin! Decided, enormously increased appliance of soap-and-water, in all its branches, with all its adjuncts; this, according to Miers, would be an improvement. He says also ("in his haste," as is probable, like the Hebrew Psalmist) that all Chileno men are liars; all, or in appearance, all! A people that uses almost no soap, and speaks almost no truth, but goes about in that fashion, in a state of personal nastiness, and also of spiritual nastiness, approaching the sublime; such peo As to O'Higgins the Second Patriot, Natural son O'Higgins, he, as we said, had almost no success whatever as a governor; being hampered by class-legislation. Alas, a governor in Chile cannot succeed. A governor there has to resign himself to the want of success; and should say, in cheerful interrogative tone, like that Pope elect, who, showing himself on the balcony, was greeted with mere howls, "Non piacemmo al popolo ?"—and thereupon proceed cheerfully to the next fact. Governing is a rude business everywhere; but in South America it is of quite primitive rudeness; they have no parliamentary way of changing minis-ness of those remote populations, rises almost tries as yet; nothing but the rude primitive way of hanging the old ministry on gibbets, that the new may be installed! Their government has altered its name, says the sturdy Mr. Miers, rendered sulky by what he saw there: altered its name, but its nature continues as before. Shameless peculation, malversation, that is their government: op, ression formerly by Spanish officials, now by native haciendados, land-proprietors,-the thing called justice still at a great distance from them, says the sulky Mr. Miers!—Yes, bt. coming always, answer we; every new gibbeting of an old ineffectual ministry bringing justice somewhat nearer! Nay, as Miers himself has to admit, certain improvements are already indisputa-ple is not easy to govern well!— ble. Trade everywhere, in spite of multiplex confusions, has increased, is increasing: the days of somnolent monopoly and the old Acapulco ship are gone, quite over the horizon. Two good, or partially good measures, the very necessity of things has everywhere brought about in those poor countries: clipping of the enormous bat-wings of the clergy, and emancipating of the slaves. Bat-wings, we say; for truly the South American clergy had grown to be as a kind of bat-vampires readers have heard of that huge South American blood-sucker, which fixes its bill in your circulating vital-fluid as you lie asleep, and there sucks; waving you with the motion of its detestable leather wings into ever deeper sleep; and so drinking till it is satisfied, and you do not awaken any more! The South American governments, all in natural feud with the old church-dignitaries, and likewise all in great straits for cash, have everywhere confiscated the monasteries, cashiered the disobedient dignitaries, melted the superfluous church-plate into piasters; and, on the whole, shorn the wings of their vampire; so that if it still suck, you will at least have a chance of awakening before death!-Then again, the very want of soldiers of liberty led to the emancipating of blacks, yellows, and other coloured persons; your mulatto, nay your negro, if well drilled, will stand fire as well as another. Poor South American emancipators; they began with Volney, Raynal and Company, at that gospel of Social Contract and the Rights| But undoubtedly by far the notablest of all these South American phenomena is Dr. Francia and his Dictatorship in Paraguay; concerning whom and which we have now more particularly to speak. Francia and his "reign of terror" have excited some interest, much vague wonder in this country; and especially given a great shock to constitutional feeling. One would rather wish to know Dr. Francia;-but unhappily one cannot! Out of such a murk of distracted shadows and rumours, in the other hemisphere of the world, who would pretend at present to decipher the real portraiture of Dr. Francia and his Life? None of us can. A few credible features, wonderful enough, original enough in our constitutional time, will perhaps to the impartial eye disclose themselves; these, with some endeavour to interpret these, may lead certain readers into various reflections, constitutional and other, not entirely without benefit. Certainly, as we say, nothing could well shock the constitutional feeling of mankind, as Dr. Francia has done. Dionysius the tyrant of Syracuse, and indeed the whole breed of tyrants, one hoped, had gone many hundred years ago, with their reward; and here, under our very nose, rises a new "tyrant," claiming also his reward from us! Precisely when constitutional liberty was beginning to be understood a little, and we flattered ourselves that by due ballot-boxes, by due registration Travels in Chile. courts, and bursts of parliamentary eloquence, | Francia, Dictator of Paraguay, is, at present, something like a real National Palaver would to the European mind, little other than a be got up in those countries, arises this tawny- chimera; at best, the statement of a puzzle, visaged, lean, inexorable Dr. Francia; claps to which the solution is still to seek. As the you an embargo on all that; says to con- Paraguenos, though not a literary people, can stitutional liberty, in the most tyrannous man- many of them spell and write, and are not ner, Hitherto, and no farther! It is an un- without a discriminating sense of true and deniable, though an almost incredible fact, untrue, why should not some real "Life of that Francia, a lean private individual, Practi- Francia," from those parts, be still possible? tioner of Law, and Doctor of Divinity, did, If a writer of genius arise there, he is hereby for twenty or near thirty years, stretch out his invited to the enterprise. Surely in all places rod over the foreign commerce of Paraguay, your writing genius ought to rejoice over an saying to it, Cease! The ships lay high and acting genius, when he falls in with such; dry, their pitchless seams all yawning on the and say to himself: "Here or nowhere is the clay banks of the Parana; and no man could thing for me to write of! Why do I keep pen trade but by Francia's license. If any person and ink at all, if not to apprize men of this entered Paraguay, and the Doctor did not like singular acting genius and the like of him? his papers, his talk, conduct, or even the cut My fine-arts and aesthetics, my epics, literaof his face, it might be the worse for such tures, poetics, if I will think of it, do all at person! Nobody could leave Paraguay on bottom mean either that or else nothing what. any pretext whatever. It mattered not that ever!" you were man of science, astronomer, geologer, astrologer, wizard of the north; Francia heeded none of these things. The whole world knows of M. Aimé Bonpland; how Francia seized him, descending on his tea-establishment in Entre Rios, like an obscene vulture, and carried him into the interior, contrary even to the law of nations; how the great Humboldt and other high persons expressly applied to Dr. Francia, calling on him, in the name of human science, and as it were under penalty of reprobation, to liberate M. Bonpland; and how Dr. Francia made no answer, and M. Bonpland did not return to Europe, and indeed has never yet returned. It is also admitted that Dr. Francia had a gallows, had jailers, law-fiscals, officials; and executed, in his time, "upwards of forty persons," some of them in a very summary manner. Liberty of private judgment, unless it kept its mouth shut, was at an end in Paraguay. Paraguay lay under interdict, cut off for above twenty years from the rest of the world, by a new Dionysius of Paraguay. All foreign commerce had ceased; how much more all domestic constitution-building! These are strange facts. Dr. Francia, we may conclude at least, was not a common man but an uncommon. How unfortunate that there is almost no knowledge of him procurable at present! Next to none. The Paraguenos can in many cases spell and read, but they are not a literary people; and, indeed, this Doctor was, perhaps, too awful a practical phenomenon to be calmly treated of in the literary way. Your Breughel paints his sea-storm, not while the ship is labouring and cracking, but after he has got to shore, and is safe under cover! Our Buenos-Ayres friends, again, who are not without habits of printing, lay at a great distance from Francia, under great obscurations of quarrel and controversy with him; their constitutional feeling shocked to an extreme degree by the things he did. To them, there could little intelligence float down, on those long muddy waters, through those vast distracted countries, that was not more or less of a distracted nature; and then from BuenosAyres over into Europe, there is another long tract of distance, liable to new distractions. Hitherto our chief source of information as to Francia is a little book, the second on our list, set forth in French some sixteen years ago, by the Messrs. Rengger and Longchamp. Translations into various languages were executed; of that into English it is our painful duty to say that no man, except in the case of extreme necessity, shall use it as reading. The translator, having little fear of human detection, and seemingly none at all of divine or diabolic, has done his work even unusually ill; with ig norance, with carelessness, with dishonesty prepense; coolly omitting whatsoever he saw that he did not understand:-poor man, if he yet survive, let him reform in time! He has made a French book, which was itself but lean' and dry, into the most wooden of English false books; doing evil as he could in that matter;and claimed wages for it, as if the feat deserved wages first of all! Reformation, even on the small scale, is highly necessary. The Messrs. Rengger and Longchamp were, and we hope still are, two Swiss Surgeons; who in the year 1819 resolved on carrying their talents into South America, into Paraguay, with views towards "natural history," among other things. After long towing and struggling in those Parana floods, and distracted provinces, after much detention by stress of weather and of war, they arrived accordingly in Francia's country; but found that without Francia's leave they could not quit it again. Francia was now a Dionysius of Paraguay. Paraguay had grown to be, like some mousetraps and other contrivances of art and nature, easy to enter, impossible to get out of. Our brave Sur. geons, our brave Rengger (for it is he alone of the two that speaks and writes) reconciled themselves; were set to doctoring of Francia's soldiery, of Francia's self; collected plants and beetles; and, for six years, endured their lot rather handsomely at length, in 1825, the em bargo was for a time lifted, and they got home. This book was the consequence. It is not a good book, but at that date there was, on the subject, no other book at all; nor is there yet any other better, or as good. We consider it to be authentic, veracious, moderately accurate; though lean and dry, it is intelligible, rational; in the French original, not unreadable. We may |