Daily National Intelligencer

M. De Pradt thus concludes the twenty second chapter of his work on Colonial Establishments; the preceding part of which we have already given:

With these important considerations we might conclude this article; but we wish to appeal to the voice of humanity: she implores succor from every one that possesses a human heart, to aid in banishing from the world those execrable impositions which have passed from Europe to America, and which, under specious and reverend denominations, cover so many outrages. There the name of man is obliterated, and nothing is seen but enemies cutting each other's throats; every thing falls beneath the sword, or is consumed by the flames: the soldier of Spain, the wicked instrument of vengeance, has made the abominable law of extermination the sole code of America. (1). For how long a time still shall we calmly contemplate these horrors, which degrade men from the most noble attributes of their character, and cause them to descend to the rank of the most ferocious animals! Horrors, which so strangely contrast with the general urbanity of the manners of Europe, and, above all, with those of the northern part of that country! Shall the new world continue to be devastated in the full view of the old; and after having done so much for Africa against Europe, and for Europe against Africa, will nothing be done for America? A king of Syracuse imposed upon vanquished Carthage no other law than that of abolishing human sacrifices: the Catholic religion caused the bloody altars of Mexico to disappear: Spain has re-established these detestable altars; and with an army of inhuman sacrificers, has made of slaughtered America a hecatomb to her ill-founded power. Will Europe forever doom the unfortunate inhabitants of that climate to such sufferings, and will she never cease to demand their gold with their blood, and their blood with their gold? In ancient times the senate of Rome listened with attention even to the complaints of a barbarian of the Danube, and ordered his oppressors to be arrested. Ah! at that day, how nobly was Rome represented by her senate! How much more exalted would it be for Europe, if she would interpose, in the name of humanity, her august arbiterment, to diminish the evils which she has herself given birth to in America, and, by interfering between the combatants, to compel them to suspend their blows! In that case, America and Spain, presenting themselves before this Areopagus, before these plenipotentiaries of the most elevated rank, and which would be those of humanity herself, what sensations would not the former excite, and what would the latter have to answer, when America, discovering her wounds, and showing her bleeding veins almost exhausted of blood, should say, "Has heaven, cruel Spain, formed me for you alone? Happy and tranquil during the centuries which preceded the hour when Columbus arrived upon my soil even from the foundation of the world, the first knowledge I had of you was by hostility and blood. Scarcely arrived upon my borders, when your soldiers rained upon my children a fire which devoured them; your steeds trampled them under feet: you destroyed my thrones, and those ancient altars, erected by my gratitude to the sun, whose rays fertilized my lands, gave the most brilliant colors to my flowers and my fruits, gladdened the inhabitants of my forests and of my vast plains, and ripened the juices of my vegetables. The sap of my plants gives you health; the interior of my mountains bestows upon you riches; and death, always death, until this moment, has been the sole minister of your acknowledgment. Since you extended upon the funeral pile the last offspring of my Incas, since you transported to another hemisphere the race that occupied the throne of Mexico, have you ceased for an instant to heap outrage upon outrage, and to add ruin to ruin? "You were received upon my territory, and you immediately declared me a slave: and to give yourself a color of right to subjugate me, you placed all my children far from you, in the last rank of the chain of beings. Rome commanded you to recognize in them men; and for this time your obedience to her orders was without reproach: but then you resorted to chains and to the sword to fill up the distance which you placed between them and you. Without doubt, to be your slaves is not so great a good as to be exterminated: my children disappeared. Then at least, you were not parricides; but, at this day, is it not your own blood which you shed? Who are we? and who are you yourself? Have the adopted children of America lost in your eyes their original character? Do you no more recognize in them your own brethren? More excusable in your first outrages, your blows were levelled at a stranger race; but now, it is against your other self that you are armed. An absurd and fantastical worship no longer separates us; my voice responds to the accents of that refined and grave language which you have spread over the vast extent that I occupy: a mother is always careful of the happiness of her children; a proprietor attends to the improvement of his inheritance: by what shall I identify in you such maternal sentiments, such provident attention? Dare I to lie? What have you done for me? and what have I not done for you? You obtained the sway, and the empire which you governed commenced by giving you alarms. The extent of my territory affrights you when you compare it with the restricted limits of your own. My riches put your poverty to shame; my fecundity makes you blush for the sterility of your soil. My products attracted your population, and you found your towns unpeopled and your fields deserted. You began by repressing these principles of strength and happiness, by arresting these exuberant sources of prosperity, and would suffer the tree to bear no fruit, except such as you were to gather. It was thus that the Dutch treated the Moluccas. With regard to me, nature received from you an order no longer to bring forth. You deny to me the benefits of the olive, the vine, and the silk worm. America must be made sterile that Spain may be cultivated; she must be despoiled of workmen to enrich Spanish merchants in Europe: all that you allow me, is to procure and remit gold to you: all other communication with the other parts of the world is interdicted to me, and if I have been discovered for the rest of the globe, it still remains to be discovered for me. In vain the useful or pleasing productions of its industry present themselves at my ports; you will not permit them to be opened, except to the awkwardness and high prices of your workshops. My rivers and my havens would contain all the vessels of the world; and yet under your iron laws, their solitude is only disturbed, at distant intervals, by weak agents, whom the wants of your treasury and political intrigues send thither. Do you not govern me by strangers? By whom are they replaced? By other strangers. Happy if this reproach is the only one which their arrival gives me the right of addressing to them, and if they do not consider their appointments as the quick and easy means of arriving at fortune. (2) Behold in these particulars what your empire has cost me. Add to these your wars, in which I am not interested, which cause my ports to be blockaded, my coasts to be ravaged, and change my vast territory into a prison. Ought Mexico and Lima to be punished, because in Europe you are embarrassed by some intrigue, or involved in some misfortunes? But the endurance of such evils has a limit. For a long space of time you have been for me as if you had not existed. Events, for which I am not to blame, have produced this separation: they have introduced other relations; a different estimate of things: they are established: they have created for me a new existence. Shall I abjure it for your benefit, at the price of the same wretchedness which I have already experienced? Let me follow in peace the current of my age, and that of the new impulse of the universe. If I was carried away by the times and circumstances which gave me to you, how shall I resist those which release me from your hands? You deceive yourself: you think that I have broken the ties between us, whilst it is nature herself and the new principles of the whole world, I have entered my career in that world: you would have retained me to yourself exclusively, so that I should never assume my station there. Say: is it your king that solely reigns over me? No: it is in every Spaniard, every workshop, every counting-house of Spain, that wishes to see in me a subject and a slave. The burden is too great to be borne all at once: I shake it off: then comes sword and fire. Blood and ashes smoke in every direction: and the lion of Castile, rival to the eagle of the Incas, seeks in vain to defend himself against the talons of the latter. (2) This observation is only intended in a general sense, and the reproach is almost entirely confined to subalterns. Disinterestedness forms a principal trait in the character of the Spaniards, and especially among the superior classes. The higher posts of government occasion for them a greater diminution than an augmentation of wealth. America has seen, with gratitude, a great number of vice-roys, solely occupied with the public interests, and in the exercise of the public virtues. The memory of several of them will survive with honor on her records, and respect will, for a long time, be attached to the names of Galvez, De Croix, Revillagigedo, and d'Azanza.

"CARACAS, 18TH NOV. 1815.

"I enjoin you to lay aside every humane consideration. All the insurgents, their abettors, or adherents, found with arms, or without arms, and, in short, all those who have taken any part whatever in the commotions which exist on the island, must be shot immediately, without any preliminary or summary proceeding, and simply after a verbal examination, in presence of three officers."

Instructions of Governor Ureztieta to Captain Ganigo.

"You will give no quarter to any one, and you will allow your troops to pillage wherever they arrive. If you find the enemy weak, you will follow him to St. John. You will burn that place, and return when every thing is tranquil."

When the insurgents took Margarita, these documents, and others of the same kind, fell into their hands. It was after having seen these orders and instructions carried into execution, that they put to death eight hundred royalists, who had retired to Pampatar.

Reflections of the Glasgow paper.

In the treaties of Paris and Vienna, the allies appear to have been occupied in assigning to each one the possession of their respective colonies, without troubling themselves about the colonial system, and without taking any notice of the changes produced by the last twenty five years. And when some of these powers attempt to re-enter their colonies, in what a condition will they find them!
Calling the ferocity of that of my forests,
seeks to reign, like the latter, only amidst
deserts.

"What ideas have you formed with
respect to the rights of sovereignty? Has
heaven, in creating man, intended him
merely for a subject? Must he bow his
neck to the yoke, whatever may be the
mode or the weight of his grievances?
And is it not his oppressors that have
made him a rebel? You think, then, that
when men make the least resistance, it
requires extermination; that, to follow
the light of nature, is to relinquish all
their duties; that for reflecting and com-
paring, they merit death? In Spain are the
children, who arrive at the age of man-
hood, never separated from their pa-
rents, and do you not allow them in
their turn to establish a family? Well;
it is this privilege that I claim: the hour
has arrived: every thing within has
reached the point of maturity; without,
every thing is clear, inviting, and full of
great prospects. Shall I alone remain in
the swaddling clothes and in the darkness
in which you pretend to hold me?
What are your means of doing it?
Where are your treasures? In the
sides of my mountains. Where are
your vessels? In my forests. There
are your contributions? In my farms,
which you have devastated; on my
plains, which you have rendered sterile.
Where are your soldiers? Alas! drag-
ged by you to the extermination of their
brothers. Upon what will you rely, when
they come to view the gold which I can
cause to glitter before their eyes, instead
of the slender pay which you assign
them: or if they should come to taste
the fruits which I can offer them, in place
of a subsistence measured out to them by
avarice, and diminished by the frauds of
cupidity; when they come to contem-
plate the wives to which I can unite
them, in lieu of that sorrowful celibacy to
which you have doomed their youth and
their whole lives? Re-collect those Barba-
rarians who would not return from Greece
once they had tasted of her fruits, once
they had perceived those beauties which
had served as models for the first artists
of the world. But suppose your soldiers
should remain faithful to you: sent for
my destruction, they would arrive only to
find their tombs. Do you imagine that
their aspect has in it any thing terrible
for me? We no longer live in the times
of Cortes and Pizarro: my children are
of the same race as yourselves: your
arms and your horses no longer surprise
us: for a long time, in this region, you
were thought to be immortal; but we
are well convinced that you can die. Be-
lieve me; and the counsel of an enemy
is sometimes salutary; abjure a domin-
ion which has arrived at the term marked
out by nature; it is unfruitful for you,
and oppressive for me. Learn that
henceforth one people have no occasion
to be the master of another people; but
are destined simply to trade with them;
confide to my prosperity the providing a
reparation for the losses which you ap-
prehend: this prosperity will become
your own. Ah! if you had commenced
in that way! Nothing would I have dis-
turbed the common happiness; it would
have cost you nothing, and you would
have been associated in the profits of those
establishments, the growth of which you
would not then have seen with painful
emotions. Your new riches will be with-
out expense, without trouble, and with-
out dishonor: such a state of things is no
less consonant to your repose than to
your natural generosity. If it is to be
otherwise, you will occasion a depopula-
tion and ruin within your own bosom, si-
milar to that of which you have once al-
ready accused me of being the cause.
Re-enter the path which will conduct us
both to happiness; put an end to this
homicidal war, which imbrues our hands
in blood that ought only to flow in our
veins for each other, in the most gentle
current: substitute for it the peaceable
and useful contests of industry, of labor,
of commerce: let us strive which can
excel, young America or old Spain: till
your fields, and I will work my mines to
draw thence the gold that shall pay for
your harvests: recall the industry which
has been exiled from your workshops; I
will await their products with piles of
wealth. I have all that you want, but it
is no longer by the sword that you can
obtain it: be satisfied with what nature
has awarded to persevering industry; it
is the new law of the universe, and it will
not be set aside in your favor. I would
only apply it to the differences which
have armed us one against the other. But
if these representations, so well founded
in justice, in reason, in sentiments of fra-
ternity, do not soften your heart; if it
remains inflexible to the cries of my grief;
If nothing will satisfy you but the bring-
ing of me again under the yoke; if fore-
sight will not avert you from the danger
of my resentment; if some day Ameri-
ca refuses to Spain that which Spain re-
fuses at this time to America; if you ap-
peal entirely to arms, and will have no
other umpire but arms, then, seeing that
it is my enslavement alone that you seek,
cost me what it will. I shall be compelled
to reply to you in arms, and to show you
my ultimatum engraved upon my sword."