Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/98

74 for others the gold and silver of which they are themselves denied the enjoyment. Amid so many contradictory judgments, I fancied that your society would pronounce a definitive opinion, so as at once to fix the true estimation in which we ought to be holden. I was persuaded that the miners would be covered with laurels and encomiums, by the means of your panegyrics. It appeared to me that you would load us with honours; and, in short, I entertained a thousand other ideas of the same description, of the futility of which I am now persuaded. I perceive, gentlemen, that, with a determination to have a pluck at our mantle, you set out by revealing our necessities, and endeavour to oblige us to obtain relief, encouragement, and wealth, by the rugged path of first exposing our miseries, and the deficiencies which are to be noticed in the fundamental principles of our association. The letter of Egerio Chrysaforo which you have published, has electrified my spirit. At first sight it appears to be a simple vindication of the miners, in whose favour it offers an emphatical apology ; but being examined with more circumspection, it turns out to be a relation of their calamities, and a detail of the multiplied obstacles by which their progress is impeded. I, at least, suppose it to have been direCted to such an aim; and, on this supposition, I find in it a palpable defect, which I shall endeavour to demonstrate and supply in the best manner possible.

"Policy, or it may be fear, or self-love, has occasioned Egerio to avoid the explanation of the sentence in his letter, in which he observes, that the miners are oppressed by the cruelty of men. The same principles may have inspired him with the idea of pointing out, as the cause of the ness