Page 344 - Vida y Obra de Vizcardo Guzman - Vol-1

Volumen 1
Miranda, Viscardo y la difusión de la «Carta»
number of the ex-Jesuits of South America from Italy, for the purpose of using
their influence in disposing the minds of their countrymen for the meditated
changes. Of this number was the author of the present appeal, in which the
inhabitants of South Ameripa are called upon, by every consideration inte-
resting to human kind, to take the management of their own affairs into their
own hands, and to establish a just and beneficent government, which mey
at once insure their own happiness, and open a liberal intercourse of bene-
fits with the rest of mankind. This uncommon person, who evinces a share
of knowledge, of thought and of liberality, worthy of the most enlightened
countries, died in London in the month of Februaty 1798, and left the present
tract, in manuscript, together with several [278] other papers, in the hands of
Mt. King, at that time minister in this country from the United States. It was
afterwards printed, by means of General Miranda, for the purpose of being
circulated among his countrymen.
At a moment like the present, we doubt not it will appear of impor-
tance to our readers to contemplate the sentiments of a man who may, to so
great a degree, be considered as the representative of the leading classes of his
countrymen, on a question at all times highly interesting to Great Britain, but
which, in the present situation of Europe, assumes an incalculabel importance.
In presenting to his countrymen a short sketch of their history, he tells
them, after Herrera, that their progenitors won the country by their own en-
terprize, and established themselves in it at their own charges, without a far-
thing of expense to the mother country; that, of their own free accord, they
made to her the donation of their vast and opulent acquisitions; that, instead
of a pateranl and protecting government, they had experienced, at her hands,
the most galling effectos of a jealous, rapacious and oppressive administra-
tion; and that, for the long period of three centuries, their attachment to her
had triumphed over the strongest causes of resentmen. He then draws a pictu-

_____________________
26. Montesquieu says of this Order, 'i! est glorieux pour elle d'avoir été la premiere qui ait montré dans
ces contrées (Spanish America) l'idée de la religion jointe a celle de l'humanité. En reparant les desvasta-
tions des Espagnoles, elle a comencé a guérir une des grandes plaies qu'ait encore reçues le enre humain'
(Esprit des Lois, liv. IV, ch. 6). Dr. Robertson too, when treating of the rapacious, oppressive and licen-
tious lives of the ecclesiastics of that country, says, «It is remarkable that all the authors, who censure the
licentiousness of the Spanish regulars with the greatest severity, concur in vindicating the conduct of
the Jesuits. Formed under a discipline more perfect than that of the other monastic orders, or animated
by that concern for the honour of the Society, wich takes such full possession of every member of the
order, the Jesuits, both in Mexico and Peru, it is allowed, maintained a most irreproachable decency of
manners» (History of America, vol. IV, note xix).

343