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214 divert the projected expedition from the River Plate, and to secure the acquiescence of Portugal and the evacuation of the Banda Oriental by marrying the future king to a Brazilian Princess. Congress, setting at naught the Republican constitution so lately sworn, and without any attempt to consult the will of the people, sanctioned this arrangement in secret session, and on the 12th November authorised their agent to conclude the treaty. As the Spanish expedition would thus be set free to act against Mexico, Venezuela, or New Granada, or to reinforce the Government of Peru, this was an act of treachery to the programme of the revolution and a desertion of the cause of America.

Rondeau was the last weak representative of the centralized system of government, which had so far led the revolution; now the Argentine people took the matter into their own hands, and by civil strife crushed out the last remnant of the colonial system. Now was heard for the first time among them the word. The people, groaning under a load of taxation to supply revenues in the disposal of which they had no voice, found the domination of Buenos Ayres equally oppressive with that of Spain, and gave a new interpretation to the word liberty: they now construed it to mean provincial independence.

At the close of the year 1819 the Army of the Andes was the only Argentine representative of the American propaganda. Stationed on foreign soil, it had escaped the contagion of party spirit, which had infected all the other armies of the Republic, and was ready to follow its great captain whithersoever he should choose to lead it.

Still San Martin hesitated. To obey Rondeau was to plunge into civil strife, to the destruction of his great plan; his regard for discipline impelled him to obey at any cost. He had already given orders to march, when news reached him that the Province of Tucuman had declared itself independent; that the army under Belgrano had mutinied and imprisoned its general; and that there