Thus the rather curious circumstance arose that South America flung off
the Spanish dominion (which during its last decade had grown by
comparison with the past considerate and beneficent), in order to
replace it by the far more tyrannical Governors of their own creation.
It was doubtless the fact that these despots who ruled so unmercifully
over the South Americans were men of their own race and country that
tended to reconcile the private citizens to the very real perils and
oppressions which they now had to endure. The social upheaval had been
such that, although many of these _caudillos_ or despotic chieftains
were descended from aristocratic Spanish colonial families, others were
mere children of opportunity, whose ancestry and origin could bear no
comparison with their feats, dark though these latter may have been.
In the eyes of many European contemporaries, and even in those of a
multitude of their own people, the condition of the erstwhile Spanish
South American colonists showed no glimmer of hope for a considerable
time after the much-desired liberation had actually been obtained. Yet
all this time the leaven was working very slowly, but very surely. The
fact, indeed, was that, although the acts and circumstances, politically
speaking, of the River Plate provinces grew wilder and more desperate,
the human substance of the nation was steadily improving and becoming
enlightened--a somewhat curious paradox! Even during the tyranny of the
most remorseless of the _caudillos_ the enlightenment was working its
way among the mass of the people.
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