102 EXPULSION OF THE OIDORES. the Junta to a sense of the immediate danger which threatened, and it was resolved to get rid both of Cisneros and the royal court of Audiencia. Their expulsion was well managed. The ex-Viceroy and the five principal Oidores were invited to the government palace or fort, to a conference. They were so infatuated that they all went in state,— Cisneros in full uniform, and the Oidores with their gold-headed canes, thinking they were about to be reinstated in all their honours, that the Junta were ready to call peccavi. They were promptly undeceived. As soon as they were ushered into the saloon, Casteli, the most decided as well as the most talented man of the Junta, rose and said, "The Junta think it proper to send your excellency and your lordships before the majesty of the throne, there to answer for your conduct." Not a word more passed: the night was very dark, and, in profound silence, a detachment of troops, with lighted torches and lanterns, conducted the coaches of the bewildered Viceroy and Oidores to the Mole. An English vessel was in waiting to take them to the Canary Islands, dependencies of Spain; and before the public knew EXPULSION OF THE OIDORES. 103 an iota of the matter, the next morning the expelled viceroy and judges were sixty miles from Buenos Ayres, with a fair wind, fast leaving the River Plate never more to return. One Oidor, less culpable than his brethren and full of years, was left unmolested; and while all was changing around him, he continued to occupy the presidential chair of the supreme court of justice. The places of the expelled were supplied from among advocates, natives of the country. The day after the expulsion, the Junta issued a long manifesto, containing a detail of the whole proceedings. Among many grave charges gravely urged was this very odd one,-that on the occasion. of taking the oaths of allegiance the attorney-general went indolently up to the table, picking his teeth with a tooth-pick; and that subsequently, as if to add to the insult, the Oidor Reges approached to the same solemnity, not using even a tooth-pick but his nails, in cleaning his teeth. These were provoking little acts of contempt, no doubt; but one cannot help smiling to find them noted with gravity in a state paper addressed to the nation. While the Junta, however, disposed of its domestic enemies, as we have related, it was pressed and 104 POLICY OF ENGLAND. harassed by exterior foes. The governor of Monte Video, Elio, blockaded Buenos Ayres with all his maritime force, and Cordova, stirred up by Liniers, who continued faithful and active in the cause of the mother-country, rose up in arms against the government of the patriots; their hostile movements being in combination with those of Elio, on the one hand, and of Goyeneche, in Peru, on the other. The Junta, nothing daunted, sent a force of twelve hundred men against the Cordovese insurgents, who were headed by Liniers, and they bade defiance to Elio and his blockading squadron. What was less wise, they sent eight hundred men under General Belgrano, one of the vocales of the Junta, against Paraguay. Though Paraguay, however, Cordova, Monte Video, and two or three places in Upper Peru, held out, the great proportion of the provinces gave in their adhesion to the new order of things as established in Buenos Ayres, the metropolis of the viceroyalty. And it may also here be remarked, that though now in alliance with Spain, England quietly favoured the separation of the colonies from the POLICY OF ENGLAND. 105 mother-country, finding her account in a direct and rapidly increasing trade; and the British merchants, by this time established in Buenos Ayres, began to exercise a beneficial though quite indirect influence over public affairs and public opinion at the seat of government. We are, &c., THE AUTHORS. LETTER XXX. THE AUTHORS to GENERAL MILLER. The Pampero of 1810-The Mercurio Frigate-Elio rejected— Vigodet-The Junta refuses to acknowledge the Regency-Liniers defeated near Cordova-His Death-General Balcarce-His Victory at Suipacha-The Provinces of Peru-Blockade of Buenos Ayres-Captain Elliot-The Misletoe and Captain Ramsay-The Executive composed of twenty-two Members!— Cornelio de Saavedra-Doctor Moreno named Minister to England-His Death. London, 1842. WHILE the Spanish frigate Mercurio lay in the outer roadstead of Buenos Ayres, blockading the port, a pampero, or south wind, very nearly placed her in possession of the patriots. Of the pampero we have often had occasion to speak. On this occasion, July, 1810, its strength and fury rose to those of a hurricane, and blowing steadily from one point during the first forty-eight hours, its force seemed to increase in a geometrical ratio. Its effect is always to produce a low river, sweeping the waters into the sea with an irresistible impulse and rapidity; but in the present instance it so far exceeded its usual powers, that in the morning after |