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COLONEL KING.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, April 1848.]

HE first element of the social union, obedience to a

THE

government of some sort, has not been found an easy thing to establish in the world. Among a timid and spiritless race, like the inhabitants of the vast plains of tropical countries, passive obedience may be of natural growth; though even there we doubt whether it has ever been found among any people with whom fatalism, or in other words, submission to the pressure of circumstances as the decree of God, did not prevail as a religious doctrine. But the difficulty of inducing a brave and warlike race to submit their individual arbitrium to any common umpire has always been felt to be so great, that nothing short of supernatural power has been deemed adequate to overcome it; and such tribes have always assigned to the first institution of civil society a divine origin. In modern Europe itself, after the fall of the Roman empire, to subdue the feudal anarchy, and bring

*Twenty-four Years in the Argentine Republic. By Col. J. Anthony King, an Officer in the Army of the Republic. London: 1846.

the whole people of any European nation into subjection to government (although Christianity, in its most concentrated form, was cooperating with all its influences in the work), required thrice as many centuries as have elapsed since that time.

'Wherever this habitual submission to law and government has been firmly and durably established, and yet the vigour and manliness of character which resisted its establishment have been in any degree preserved, certain requisites have existed; certain conditions have been fulfilled, of which the following may be regarded as the principal. First; there has existed, for all who were accounted citizens for all who were not slaves, kept down by brute force a system of education, beginning with infancy and continued through life, of which, whatever else it might include, one main and incessant ingredient was restraining discipline.

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The second condition of permanent political society has been found to be, the existence, in some form or other, of the feeling of allegiance or loyalty. This feeling may vary in its objects, and is not confined to any particular form of government; but whether in a democracy or in a monarchy, its essence is always the same; namely, that there be in the constitution of the state something which is settled, something permanent, and not to be called in question; something which, by general agreement, has a right to be where it is, and to be secure against disturbance, whatever else may change.

"When the questioning of this fundamental principle is

(not an occasional disease, but) the habitual condition of the body politic; and when all the violent animosities are called forth, which spring naturally from such a situation, the state is virtually in a position of civil war; and can never long remain free from it in act and fact.

The third essential condition, which has existed in all durable political societies, is a strong and active principle of nationality. We need scarcely say that we do not mean a senseless antipathy to foreigners, or a cherishing of absurd peculiarities because they are national; or a refusal to adopt what has been found good by other countries. In all these senses, the nations which have had the strongest national spirit have had the least nationality. We mean a principle of sympathy, not of hostility; of union, not of separation. We mean a feeling of common. interest among those who live under the same government, and are contained within the same natural or historical boundaries. We mean, that one part of the community shall not consider themselves as foreigners to another part; that they shall cherish the tie which holds them together; shall feel that they are one people, that their lot is cast together; that evil to any of their fellow countrymen is evil to themselves, and that they cannot selfishly free themselves from their share of any common inconvenience by severing the connection.'*

These remarks, of one of the profoundest and wisest of modern thinkers, are well illustrated by the present situation of the confederate states which constitute the

* Mill's Logic, vol. ii. p. 599.

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vast Argentine Republic. With a territory of which the British islands would be a subordinate province, with a more fertile soil and a finer climate than are enjoyed by the most favoured parts of Europe; with means of transport by land unimpeded by natural obstacles, and by water assisted by extraordinary facilities; with plains swarming with horses and cattle, and with mountains where mineral riches tempted millions of British capital to migrate from the safest to the least secure of governments with all these natural advantages, the Argentine Republic is poorer, less populous, and less civilised than it was when compressed by the ignorant and selfish tyranny of Spain. Under the Spanish rule the South American provinces contained a population of more than six millions, excluding the Indians, a population nearly double that of the British North American colonies which declared their sovereignty. Thirty years of independence made these colonies one of the great nations of the civilised world. Thirty years of independence leave La Plata with its plains uncultivated, its mines abandoned, its cities half ruined, defenceless, and, therefore, constantly the victim of the insolence and injustice of foreigners, and at home oscillating between anarchy and despotism.

The difference between the fates of the two countries is generally accounted for by the existence in the British colonies of long habit of self-government, and the absence of those habits in Spanish America. This, however, as The respects Spanish America, is not strictly accurate. institutions of Spain, both at home and in her colonies,

have always favoured local self-government. A Spanish village is a little republic, managing and mismanaging its own affairs with little interference on the part of the higher authorities. With respect to her colonies, the prevailing feeling of the mother-country was always the fear of revolt. She knew how little she possessed or deserved their affection, and, during the last century, her notorious weakness made it difficult for her to inspire fear. Her object, therefore, was to keep her dependencies still weaker than herself, and, for that purpose, to deprive them of the strength which combination would have given to them. In this attempt she was assisted by nature. They were scattered over a whole hemisphere, each inhabited district a mere oasis in the wilderness, to use Mr. Merivale's picturesque language, 'separated from the rest of the world by deserts of ice and snow: by ravines compared with which the depth of our Alpine valleys is insignificant, by provinces of forest or by hot and unhealthy plains.' Commerce, and even intercourse, between district and district was discouraged, and, indeed, generally prohibited. Every town, and in many provinces every village, was, in its internal affairs, a separate community, subject to the superintendence of a Spanish official, but knowing little of the higher colonial authorities, and still less of those of Spain. Of mere local government there was probably more in Spanish than in English America.

The real causes, ultimate and proximate, of the different fortunes of the two countries, are to be found in Mr. Mill's