Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/198



168 A DAY AT BUENOS AIRES.

and he gave me the three lately published volumes of Dr. Martin de Moussy, in whose labours^ as a basis for a future superstructure^ he had taken a lively interest.

My admiration of General Mitre does not blind me to the fact that his later career bears upon it the stain of a profound political immorality,, in having caused for party, nay, for personal and for egotistic purposes, a military alli- ance, whose result is the present disastrous and by no means honourable war. Possibly he did not expect such energetic action on the part of Paraguay, which at Buenos Aires was looked down upon as a petty semi-barbarous, almost " Indian"*^ power. But the statesman and the biographer of Belgrano should have known better. Had he not aided and abetted with money, with thousands of muskets, and with moral support, ex-President Flores in attacking the Banda Oriental, the Brazil would have found no opportunity of interfering in the politics of the Plate ; and Paraguay, the " equilibristra,^^ would not have deemed it her interest or her duty to break the peace. The assistance rendered by General Mitre to Flores was under the rose, even as Garibaldi was provided with the Anglo-Italian Legion, whose victories, attributed to the Picciotti, so mystified the public. But he is charged by the general voice with having brought about a war which has made Buenos Aires, like Monte Video, a simple prefecture of the Cabinet of S. Christovao ; he has placed his native land in the ignoble position which Lord Palmerston chose for us in the Crimea, that of a second-rate fighting under a first-rate power ; a weak republic by the side of an immense empire. And he is bound, if he can, to defend his character, under pain of contumacious silence being charged to him.

Compare the photographs of these two celebrated men, Sarmiento and Mitre, who are both excellent illustrations of phrenology and physiognomy. The former is short.