Page:The History of San Martin (1893).djvu/34

2 nations sprang into existence, with forms and tendencies in the same likeness and similitude. It shows the proclamation of a new international law, which only permits of alliance against an enemy in the name of a common destiny, and forbids conquests and annexations. It shows also the failure of the attempt in Columbia to unite the emancipated colonies artificially into a monocracy in opposition to natural law and to the new idea of the rights of man inaugurated by the Argentine revolution.

The two hegemonies, the Argentine and the Columbian, unite to set the seal upon the emancipation of South America. San Martin and Bolívar cross the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific by different routes, giving liberty to enslaved peoples, founding new nations, and meeting as together they enclose the colonial system in its last entrenchments, they bring the two opposing systems face to face, the shock resulting in the triumph of the superior principle.

Thus considered, the history of the emancipation of South America presents a homogeneous character, with unity of action and with one dominant idea, which in the midst of accidental deviations reveals the existence of a law giving one accordant significance to facts accomplished.

The study of the theatre of the war of independence shows that the scene passes in two distinct revolutionary areas—one at the south, comprehending the United Provinces of the River Plate, Chile, and Upper Peru; the other, at the north, comprehending Venezuela, New Granada, and Quito. The strife and the triumph proceed simultaneously in each area until the two revolutions, like to two masses obeying a reciprocal attraction, converge towards the centre. This plan, drawn up and carried out by the two great Liberators, emancipates South America by the combined military action of the revolted colonies, which action has at once the ideal unity of a poem and the precision of a machine.