Page:Mexico in 1827 Vol 1.djvu/135

Rh Indians, at Lima, the subject had been taken into serious consideration; and that His Majesty, "convinced that, since the conquest, no revolution had been attempted amongst the Peruvians, which had not originated with some one better informed than the rest," had determined that the question should be referred to the Viceroy, with orders to give an opinion, as soon as possible, respecting the propriety of reforming, new-modelling, or entirely suppressing the said college."

Upon the same principle, liberty to found a school of any kind was (latterly) almost invariably refused. The municipality of Buenos Ayres was told, in answer to a petition in favour of an establishment, in which nothing but mathematics was to be taught, that learning did not become Colonies. The Padre Mier (author of a very curious work on the Mexican Revolution) enumerates various instances of a similar kind. In Bŏgŏtā, the study of chemistry was prohibited, though permitted in Mexico: and in New Grĕnādă, the works of the celebrated Mutis, though purely botanical, were not allowed to be published. Permission to visit foreign countries, or even the Peninsula, was very rarely granted, and then only for a limited time. A printing-press was conceded, as a special privilege, by the Council of the Indies, and that only to