Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/127

 MEXICO. 95 form and spirit of the Spanish government were entirely changed : principles, which had been inculcated for ages, were at once exploded ; a Constitution, democratic in the ex- treme in its theory, was substituted for the Royal Preroga- tive ; the sovereignty of the people was set against the divine rights of Kings ; and even religion was deprived of its influ- ence, as a political engine, by the abolition of the Holy Tri- bunal. That such things could take place in the Peninsula without producing corresponding effects in its dependencies was not to be expected ; and these effects it is my present object to trace. It is generally admitted, that the insurrection of Aranjuez, (1808,) which led to the dismissal of the Prince of Peace, (Godoy,) and to the abdication of Charles IV., gave the first shock to the Royal authority in America. An absolute mo- narch, compelled to bow before the will of a tumultuous po- pulace, insulted by his subjects, and deserted by his guards, in the very heart of his kingdom, was a sight that could not but tend to diminish those feehngs of almost religious awe, with which any thing like opposition to the will of the Sove- reign had been previously contemplated. The subsequent invasion of the Peninsula by Napoleon, the captivity of the Monarch, and the abdication of the old dynasty at Bayonne, contributed to destroy whatever remain- ed of the prestige, which, had before attached to the name of Spain, and created an impression only the more strong, be- cause, to the mass of the people in America, she was still the Spain of the sixteenth century, in whose dominions the sun never set, and whose arms were the terror of the world. This belief had long been the tutelary angel of the Mother country : with it she lost her moral force, (the only force ca- pable of compelling the obedience of seventeen millions of Transatlantic subjects,) and, from that moment, the loss of the Colonies themselves became inevitable.