POLITICAL ASPECT OF THE UNITED PROVINCES OF RIO DE LA PLATA, IN THE PRESENT YEAR 1825. A YEAR has elapsed since the Confidential Letter, with which this publication commences, was written in Buenos Ayres; and that year furnishes materials wherewith in some shape to complete it. It is important that the beginning and the ending should be thoroughly made known; although, among a certain class of people, it is difficult to induce a belief that any order of progressive improvement can possibly take place in America. It is not known whether this occurs in consequence of the credit attached to the notion that persons who possess any share of reasoning powers are born there in very small number-an assertion which Spain has published to the world, at the same time that she has uniformly insisted on being acknowledged as their legitimate mother. Some of those people, perchance, will affect to entertain that opinion solely in compliment to the right of antiquity; but it would seem that there are others, who, considering the Americans as descended from the blood of a nation which now shews itself only as if it were destined to vegetate in obscurity and degradation, persuade themselves that, by reason of that fact alone, similar occurrences ought to take place between America and Spain, as between the sin of Adam and eternal condemnation. It is but right, therefore, to cut the flight of the courtesies of the one, and likewise to tranquillize the other, by unfolding to them the state of that country with which we are best acquainted—namely, the Republic of Rio de la Plata. The Letter, which is published, leaves affairs in Buenos Ayres under these two points of view : 1st. That all the institutions, established and erected on the principles of civilisation, had given credit and prosperity to the place; and that the only thing remaining to be done was to preserve them. 2dly. That, after having terminated the practical organization of Buenos Ayres, what remained in the second place to effect was the extension of its influence, in a direct manner, to all the provinces of the Union. The change of the public administration, made in Buenos Ayres in conformity with the law of April 1824, justly encreased the responsibility which the ministry going out of office had in curred by closing the war of independence, and opening the career of liberty, as that was the grand and most elevated object proposed by the revolution of that country-while it placed the administration coming into power in another situation of responsibility, namely, that of completing the new institutions, by sometimes retaining and sometimes extending them with prudence and skill. The first work was, moreover, considered extremely difficult; and the second impracticable, as depending on the other; but no other motive for such apprehensions appears to have existed than that derived from the repeated examples which that country has presented, in the course of the revolution, of inconsistency, as well in her political principles, as in the maintenance of her public forms: so certain is it, that when it is considered to be troublesome to go deeply into the merits of events, it is always found convenient to confine observation to the surface of them. It is requisite, then, that we should save ourselves from this reproach. It is necessary to repeat an observation which has already been made, that the weight of it may not be forgotten; namely, that the war in which the United Provinces of Rio de la Plata have been involved, during many years, at one time to conquer the necessary territory, at another to escape from the oppression of the tribunals of the mother-country, |