Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/369

CH. XXIV.]

Two things appear remarkable in this statement; one that so many of these countries should have renounced their allegiance to Spain in two different periods as it were by a simultaneous movement, and the other is the tone of feeling the document itself expresses and is so calculated to inculcate, ascribing to the period of the Spanish dominion the opprobrious term of the "Duration of Slavery." A document of this sort exhibited in the eating-room of the haciendas of any country in South America is sufficient of itself to revolutionize any given portion of it: it cannot, of