Page:The History of San Martin (1893).djvu/59

Rh or as an artificial expedient when it was not folly. In 1808 the English constitution was the ideal of thinkers trained in the school of Montesquieu. In 1810 the social contract of Rousseau was their gospel, and the revolution of that year assumed spontaneously a popular form, producing municipal republics, whereby the course of opinion became exclusively democratic.

When early reverses damped the republican hopes of Argentine leaders, they looked to the establishment of a monarchy under the protection of the Great Powers as a means of securing independence and constitutional freedom. In 1814 it was proposed to crown an Infante of Spain King of La Plata. In 1816 that same Congress which declared the independence of the Argentine Provinces, embraced the idea of crowning a descendant of the Incas at Cuzco, and uniting Peru and the River Plate under his rule, a proposition quenched in ridicule. The same Congress, in 1819, after swearing to and promulgating a republican constitution, sought in Europe for a king, lowering their character in the eyes of the world, and bringing accusations of treachery upon themselves from their own countrymen.

This reaction took place precisely at the time when the perseverance of the republicans had gained for them universal sympathy, when the United States threw her shield over the infant peoples to protect them from the attacks of the Holy Alliance, and when England, after declaring that she would not recognise "the revolutionary governments of America," became convinced of her mistake. The agents of this policy were men such as Rivadavia, who stands in America second alone to Washington as the representative statesman of a free people; such as Belgrano, the type of republican virtue; and such as San Martin, who, a republican at heart, had no faith in democracy, yet founded republics which by natural law became democracies. When San Martin ignored this law, his career as a liberator came to an end. So also, later on,