Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/12

vi most liberal and enlightened of their administrators. They were before under the necessity of transmitting their MS. productions, destined for impression, to the capital of Spain, where they were in most instances lost to the public, either through the cupidity of the correspondents to whom the remittances, intended to defray the expences, were made, or through the restraints which are imposed, in every arbitrary government, on those who dare to give a full scope to their opinions. Those of the literati of Peru, on subjects appertaining to the policy of states, have been occasionally pronounced with a boldness and a decision which mark a strong spirit of independence, in the periodical works established, within these few years, in the capital and other parts of that kingdom.

By one of those casualties (if this term can be applied to events arising from the preponderance of a formidable marine, and from an heroic ardour carrying with it a resistless force), by which Great Britain has appropriated to herself, in her different contests with Spain, so great a share of the colonial treasures belonging to the latter nation, several volumes of a periodical work, printed at Lima, and richly stored with intellectual