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Rh sword is it that makes the rank of commander-in-chief of the provinces a necessary step in the elevation of a military leader? Where this rank does not exist, as was then the case in Buenos Ayres, it is created expressly; as if, before letting the wolf into the fold, it was necessary to expose him to general observation.

Dorrego afterward found that the provincial commander, who had caused the presidency to totter, and had contributed so powerfully to overthrow it, was a lever perpetually applied to the government; and that when Rivadavia had fallen, and Dorrego was in his place, the lever still continued its action. Dorrego and Rosas were face to face, each watching and threatening the other. Dorrego's friends recall his favorite phrase,—"The gaucho-rogue! Let him be as troublesome as he pleases; and when he is least expecting it, I will shoot him." This was just what the Ocampos said when they first felt Quiroga's heavy arm upon them. Indifferent to the people of the interior, not in high favor with the Federal party of the city, and already in antagonism with the provincial power which he had called to his aid, Dorrego, who had obtained the government through parliamentary opposition, now tried to win the Unitarios, whom he had conquered; but parties have neither charity nor foresight. "The Unitarios laughed in their sleeves, and said among themselves, "He totters, let him fall." The Unitarios did not understand that with Dorrego would fall those who might have interposed between them and the provinces; or that the monster whom they feared was not seeking Dorrego, but the city, the civil institutions, of which they themselves were the exponents.