the liberals of Spain, no less than the loyalists of Spanish
America, to hope that the "old King" would now grant a new
dispensation. Freedom of commerce and a fair measure of popular
representation in government, it was believed, would compensate
both the mother country for the suffering which it had undergone
during the Peninsular War and the colonies for the trials to
which loyalty had been subjected. But Ferdinand VII was a typical
Bourbon. Nothing less than an absolute reestablishment of the
earlier regime would satisfy him. On both sides of the Atlantic,
therefore, the liberals were forced into opposition to the crown,
although they were so far apart that they could not cooperate
with each other. Independence was to be the fortune of the
Spanish Americans, and a continuance of despotism, for a while,
the lot of the Spaniards.

As the region of the viceroyalty of La Plata had been the first
to cast off the authority of the home government, so it was the
first to complete its separation from Spain. Despite the fact
that disorder was rampant everywhere and that most of the local
districts could not or would not send deputies, a congress that
assembled at Tucuman voted on July 9, 1816, to declare the
"United Provinces in South America" independent. Comprehensive
though the expression was, it applied only to the central part of
the former viceroyalty, and even there it was little more than an
aspiration. Mistrust of the authorities at Buenos Aires,
insistence upon provincial autonomy, failure to agree upon a
particular kind of republican government, and a lingering
inclination to monarchy made progress toward national unity
impossible. In 1819, to be sure, a constitution was adopted,
providing for a centralized government, but in the country at