Page:The History of San Martin (1893).djvu/70

38 and even among themselves opinions were divided, some believing that the centralisation of power in the city of Buenos Ayres was the only means of ensuring the success of the revolutionary movement, while to others decentralization seemed the one necessary condition of national life. The revolution arose in the cities; its legality was based upon municipal rights, and could not long maintain its original form. It could only live by a wider popularity based upon the sovereignty of the people at large. Fortunately the men at this time at the helm were the most intelligent, energetic, and foreseeing who ever acted together on this stage.

The first Executive Government, installed on the 25th May, 1810, was a Junta, in imitation of those established in Spain to resist the domination of the French. Modified a year later by the admission of deputies from the provinces, it became a many-headed monster, useless alike for debate and for administration. It was succeeded by a Triumvirate under the name of "The Executive Government," which, by the aid of those men, saved the State from shipwreck.

Such was the situation of when  landed on Argentine soil.

Twenty-six years before, while yet a child, he had left his native land; now he returned in the ripeness of manhood, tempered in the struggles of life, tutored in the art of war, initiated in the mysteries of secret societies formed for the propagation of the new ideas of liberty. The new champion brought to the American cause tactics and discipline applied both to politics and to war; and, in embryo, a vast plan for a continental campaign which should embrace half a world and should result in its independence.

It has been said that San Martin was not a man but a mission, and, in truth, seldom has the influence of one man upon the destinies of humanity been greater than