head, shall march wherever danger threatens. Your Excellency knows me, and ought to fear the justice of my vengeance. Your Excellency does not cease to repeat insults, offensive to my moderation, and to the discredit of the common cause. Your Excellency ought not to think me insensible. While I am in the field, engaged in a bloody conflict with the invaders, you are labouring to weaken our force by mingling with it an affair which does not fail to excite well founded suspicions. While I am engaged in opposing the Portuguese, you are taking measures to favour them: would your Excellency in my place have regarded these things with a serene countenance? I acknowledge to your Excellency that I have made a sacrifice of my feelings to my Country which claimed a concentration of all its forces. It was this which induced me to seek a peace with your Excellency, while you were endeavouring to provoke me to a War. I opened the door, which for weighty reasons, I ought to have kept shut. I sent back to you the Officers taken prisoners, without subjecting them to the sufferings which ought to have followed the crime of their violent and cruel aggression against an innocent People. Your Excellency cannot deny those acts of generosity, and which, notwithstanding your repeated promises of reconciliation, you have not been able to equal.

It is true your Excellency did send some supply of arms to the Parana, but without giving me the least intimation of it: this deceitful act had for its object the exculpation of your Excellency from the charge of indifference in the eyes of the Provinces, and evinces the fertility of your machinations; but do not think that these shallow artifices will enable you to escape. We have just experienced the effects of this generosity, in the disturbance of the Parana and Entre Rios. Can it be concealed from the Provinces with what views these arms were distributed, when done without the knowledge of the Chief? Let me pray your Excellency to cease your generosity, if such are to be its effects; let me beseech you to refrain from aiding the Country, if you can do nothing but obscure its splendour by such hateful scenes. No, Sir, it is not from you, that our Country can expect to be freed from the ambition of the Brazilian King: instead of boasting of having saved the Country, your Excellency has nothing to boast of, but of having tortured my patience to the utmost point of endurance. I have suffered for my Country, and yet your Excellency dares to criminate me in public and private. I have no need, like your Excellency, of having defenders; incontrovertible facts speak in my behalf.

Sir, I am still ready to enter into an amicable adjustment of our difference, so as to unite our forces against the Portuguese; and I repeat the offer which I made in June last. I then requested that Deputies should be sent, with Full Powers to draw closer and closer the ties of union. Your Excellency could not deny the importance of this request, and engaged to send them. In consequence of this, I an

nounced to the People the pleasing hope of reconciliation; but until the present day, nothing but disappointment has been the result: your Excellency, it seems, has had the effrontery to announce that Deputies were expected from the Eastern Shore, at Buenos Ayres. It is but little becoming in your Excellency to frustrate so desirable an object, and afterwards calumniate me: this is the last insult I am willing to bear, and henceforth must request your Excellency to be silent. Such im. posture is not less injurious to our reciprocal interests, than insulting to me. In opposing the reconciliation of the two Shores, your Excellency can be regarded in no other light than as a criminal, and unworthy of consideration.

Your Excellency by this time must be wearied in hearing truths, but you ought to be more so in giving cause for them. They are stamped with the characters of sincerity and justice. Your Excellency has occasionally provoked my moderation: my wounded honour will demand satisfaction. I speak for once and for all; your Excellency is responsible before the altars of the Country, for an inaction incompatible with its interests, and the day will come when its justice will call you to a severe account.

In the mean time, I challenge your Excellency to appear with me in front of the Enemy, and to combat with a courage which will display all the virtues that render glorious the American name.

I have the honour, &c.

FERNANDO JOSE ARTIGAS.

H. E. Don Juan Martin Pueyrredon.

(Appendix G.)-Correspondence between the General of the Portuguese Army, and the Supreme Director of Buenos Ayres, relative to the occupation of the Banda Oriental. 1816, 1817. (Translation.) [Extract of the Gazette of Buenos Ayres, of the 5th February, 1818.]

INVASION OF THE PORTUGUESE.

In the Gazette of the 1st of December last, we published the Official Letter of his Excellency the Director, to the Portuguese General in the Banda Oriental, requiring him to cease his march into a Territory whose union with the United Provinces of the South had not been renounced, but accidentally suspended. The Portuguese General, in his Reply, denied the principles on which this Protest was founded, insisting on the pretext which had induced his Court to a rupture so unjustifiable; but as at the same time he referred for his justification to the orders of his Prince, from which he was not at liberty to depart, there were reasons to suspect that, from the slowness of his operations, and other circumstances, he might possibly have received Instructions to suspend his marches, and evacuate the Country unjustly invaded.

This doubt has disappeared with the event, and the occupation of Montevideo has been preceded by an Action, in which that precious soil has been moistened by the blood of its sons. We shall hereafter make some further observations upon this conduct; at present we shall insert the reply of the Portuguese General, as also the Official Letter of his Excellency the Director, transmitted by Don Manuel Roxas, who sailed for Montevideo the 2nd of the present month.

(1.)-The General of the Portuguese Army, in the Banda Oriental, to the Supreme Director of Buenos Ayres.

MOST EXCELLENT SIR, Paso of San Miguel, 27th Nov., 1816. TAKING into consideration what you have been pleased to communicate to me in your Official Letter of the 13th of October last past,* delivered to me by Colonel Vedia, on the 24th of this month, November; I can assure your Excellency, that my marches have for their sole object the removal of the germ of disorder from the Frontier of the Kingdom of Brazil, and the occupation of a Country abandoned to a state of anarchy.

This wise and necessary measure, ought in no respect to excite uneasiness in the Government of Buenos Ayres, since it has been executed in a Territory which has declared itself independent of the Western Side.

The most scrupulous regard has been paid to the Armistice concluded on the 26th of May, 1812, establishing amity between the 2 Countries; and in case of being attacked, I shall only act on the defensive, until the receipt of further orders from my King and Sovereign.

The Proclamation which I enclose to your Excellency will make known the spirit in which I come to this unfortunate Country by the commands of my Sovereign.

I continue my marches, which can only be suspended by order of the King, my Sovereign; and it will shortly be in my power to manifest to your Excellency the good faith of my military operations, by a better opportunity and from a nearer point.

I thank your Excellency for the occasion you have afforded me of being acquainted with Colonel Vedia.

God preserve your Excellency.

Head Quarters, in Paso of San Miguel, 27th November, 1816. CARLOS FREDERICO LECOR,

H. E. Don Juan Martin Pueyrredon.

Lieutenant-General,

(2.)-The Supreme Director of Buenos Ayres to the Portuguese General. MOST EXCELLENT SIR, Buenos Ayres, 1st February, 1817.

THE suspension which I observed in the operations of the Army under your command, after the receipt of your Reply of the 27th No

* This Letter has been mislaid.

vember last, together with the Proclamation which it enclosed, gave me reason to hope that your Excellency, doing honour to the Armistice concluded the 26th of May, 1812, between His Faithful Majesty and this Government, whose violent infraction I protested against under date of the 31st of October last, would refrain from giving rise to the horrors of war; or, at least, that you would enter into some temporary arrangement, until the explanations of your Court could be obtained, in an affair considered not less important to the Inhabitants west of the Uruguay and the Parana, than to those of the Banda Oriental. Your Excellency, notwithstanding, at an unexpected moment, hastened your marches; and, under the sole justification of force, have gone so far as to oppress with your arms the place you now occupy, but without any other effect than to convince you of the abhorrence with which its Inhabitants regard every foreign yoke.

The assurances which your Excellency presents to this Government, in your before-mentioned Official Letter, far from affording tranquillity, only excite our alarm; and the United Provinces, in the last steps of your Excellency, can discover nothing but the sad presage of the evils which threaten them, should they remain insensible to the aspirations of a Foreign Power over a constituent part of the Nation.

In order to demand an explanation of this aggression upon the rights of the Provinces, so notoriously unjust, I have determined to send an Envoy Extraordinary to His Faithful Majesty, as also to learn the origin and object of a War, into which a State at peace will be plunged, in order to secure the integrity of the Banda Oriental.

Until the reply of His Faithful Majesty shall have been received, I hope your Excellency will not prosecute the War in that Territory, but immediately suspend the operation of your arms, under a Provisional Armistice; which may be entered into by means of a Person whom I shall send with sufficient authority, so soon as your Excellency will inform me of your willingness to meet my proposal, as I hope will be done by the hand of Colonel Manuel Roxas, who is the bearer of this Communication.

If your Excellency, in rigid obedience to the orders of your Sovereign, under these extraordinary circumstances, should continue the War, your Excellency will be responsible to humanity for the blood that will be shed; and the impartial World will approve the means of indemnity that will be taken for the sacrifices of conquest, protesting, as I do, against any usurpation of Territory, comprehended within the limits recognized before the opening of the Campaign of your ExcelJency, and beyond the Frontiers of the Kingdom of Brazil.

God preserve your Excellency many years.

H. E. General Lecor.

JUAN MARTIN PUEYRREDON.

(Appendix H.)-Estimate of the Population of the Provinces of Buenos Ayres, Cordova, Tucuman, Mendoza or Cuyo, and Salta, under the names of the different Towns or Districts which send Representatives to the Congress.

(Annexed to Mr. Graham's Report.)

By an imperfect Census, taken, it is believed, in 1815, Buenos Ayres contained 98,105 Inhabitants, excluding Troops and transient Persons, and Indians.

By more recent Estimates.

Note. It is not understood that any part of the Province of Corrientes, or that of the City or District of Santa Fé, is included in this Estimate; and some Districts of some of the other Provinces may be omitted.

* Probably the Town only.

Under the various names of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Majos, and Chiquitos.