ture of the exiled Minister, taken
from the Lima newspapers; this would not have been
inserted here, except to shew the class of men with
whom I had so long to contend.
"Every honourable citizen found in Don Bernardo Monteagudo,
(this is the name of the man of whom we speak,) an enemy who
at any price would have sacrificed him. How many victims has he
not immolated in his one year's ministry! More than eight hundred
honourable families have been reduced by him to extreme indigence,
and the whole city to misery! Amongst the patriots of Lima,
nothing was thought of but where they might find an asylum in a
foreign land. Without agriculture, commerce, industry, personal
security, property, and laws, what is society here but a scene of the
most afflicting torments?"
"The religion of our forefathers suffered an equal persecution in
its ministers and its temples; these were deprived of their riches,
not for the service of our country, but for the reward of _espionage_,
and to deceive us with useless trickeries. The satellites of this
bandit were equally despotic with himself, and committed under his
protection the most horrid crimes. This is not a proper place in
which to insert the baseness with which he abused the delicacy and
weakness of females. Fathers of families * * * *. Every
man was intimidated. Every feeling man wept, because all were
the victims of the caprice of this insolent upstart, who made an
ostentation of atheism and ferocity."
"It is impossible to recapitulate his actions. Volumes would be
necessary to shew the world the arbitrary crimes of this atrocious
individual. It would appear that for the commission of so many
offences he must have had some cause that impelled him, for they
could not possibly be the effect of ignorance. It was impossible to
believe that by insulting and ruining every one, plundering our
property, despising the ingenuity and talents of the Peruvians, and
endeavouring to introduce anarchy, he could be longer tolerated in
this capital. Was the reduction of Peru to the most degrading
slavery, the means to make us or even himself happy?" &c. &c. &c
The reader can--from what has been narrated in these pages,--form pretty
correct opinions upon the majority of the enormities which drove
Monteagudo into exile. Of his private character I have always foreborn
to speak, as considerin
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