rights? And Ferdinand, the young monarch of whom so little was known
and so much expected,--he, too, a voluntary prisoner, while a Frenchman
reigned in Madrid? This was news, indeed, to bewilder nations who
had hitherto remained content in infantile tutelage, unconscious,
undesirous, of the rights of men! Addresses, fervent with loyalty, were
dispatched to Spain, embodying vows of eternal affection towards the
King, and of detestation of Joseph, the usurper. French residents in
Venezuela were publicly execrated by the excited Creoles; the French
flag was insulted, and the French messengers were glad to escape with
their lives from the hands of the infuriated Colonists. No Spanish
monarch ever had a firmer hold upon the Indies than Ferdinand VII. when
Spain was lost to him in July and August, 1808.

But soon there came that inevitable question, first in the catechism of
all human society: Whom shall we obey? The King, whose hand had weighed
not over lightly these many years, an abdicated prisoner at Bayonne;
Ferdinand yielding his authority into the hand of a nameless Regency,
and his capital to the brother of the Corsican Emperor; Spain overrun
by two hundred thousand foreign troops; messengers at hand from Joseph,
from the Regency, from the Junta of the Asturias, from the Junta of
Seville, each alike asserting its right to authority over the Colonies,
as legitimate possessors of jurisdiction in Spain itself! The accession
of Joseph, in fact, gave a momentary independence to Spanish America,
and the royal governors were thrown upon their own resources for the
maintenance of their power. The Colonies were for the first time called
upon to provide for their own defence,--solicited, not commanded, to
obey; and they proved their loyalty by dispatching enormous sums in
gold and silver to the Junta at Cadiz, as well as by their eagerness
to ascertain in whom actually reposed the lawful government of Spain.
Gradually, however, the consciousness of their own entity stole over the