the United States. Royalist control, furthermore,
had ceased in parts of the viceroyalties of La Plata and New Granada.
To regain Trinidad and Louisiana was hopeless: but a wise policy
conciliation or an overwhelming display of armed force might yet restore
Spanish rule where it had been merely suspended.

Very different was the course of events in Brazil. Strangely enough,
the first impulse toward independence was given by the Portuguese royal
family. Terrified by the prospective invasion of the country by a French
army, late in 1807 the Prince Regent, the royal family, and a host of
Portuguese nobles and commoners took passage on British vessels and
sailed to Rio de Janeiro. Brazil thereupon became the seat of royal
government and immediately assumed an importance which it could never
have attained as a mere dependency. Acting under the advice of the
British minister, the Prince Regent threw open the ports of the colony
to the ships of all nations friendly to Portugal, gave his sanction to
a variety of reforms beneficial to commerce and industry, and even
permitted a printing press to be set up, though only for official
purposes. From all these benevolent activities Brazil derived great
advantages. On the other hand, the Prince Regent's aversion to popular
education or anything that might savor of democracy and the greed of
his followers for place and distinction alienated his colonial subjects.
They could not fail to contrast autocracy in Brazil with the liberal
ideas that had made headway elsewhere in Spanish America. As a
consequence a spirit of unrest arose which boded ill for the maintenance
of Portuguese rule.

CHAPTER III "INDEPENDENCE OR DEATH"

The restoration of Ferdinand VII to his throne in 1814 encouraged the
liberals of Spain, no less than the loyalists of Spanish America, to
hope that the "old King" would now grant a new dispensation. Freedom of
commerce and a fair measure of popular representation in government, it
was believed, would compensate both the mother country for the suffering
which it had undergone during the Peninsular War and the colonies for
the trials to which loyalty had been subjected. But Ferdinand VII was
a typical Bourbon. Nothing less than an absolute reestablishment of
the earlier regime would satisfy him. On both sides of the Atlantic,
therefore, the liberals were forced into opposition to the crown,
although they were so far apart that they could not cooperate with each
o