dered in cold blood, in the dead of the night, with all who had gone on shore with him. Over-confident in his own good fortune hitherto, he had become careless, and on this occasion had not taken even the ordinary precaution of setting a single sentry to keep watch.* Great was the grief of all Paraguay at this lamentable and unexpected death of their valiant Governor, who had gained the good will of all parties by his judicious and conciliatory conduct, no less than their respect and admiration for the brave deeds by which he had signalised the period of his command, and made it ever memorable in the annals of the Rio de la Plata. If the conquest of Paraguay was the work of Yrala, so that of the province of Buenos Ayres was indisputably due to De Garay. Both were Biscayan Hidalgos of gentle birth, ambitious of fame, and alike favoured by fortune in their undertakings. The remains of Yrala lie entombed and honoured in the Church of his own building at Assumption. In due time, perhaps, some suitable public monument may equally record the good and brave deeds of the founder of Buenos Ayres, Don Juan de Garay. The importance of the cities founded by him soon became apparent; and in 1620 all the settlements south of the confluence of the rivers Paraná and Paraguay were formed into a separate government, independent of that of Paraguay, under the name of the Government of the Rio de la Plata, of which Buenos Ayres was declared the capital, as well as the seat of a new bishoprick, created about the same time by Pope Paul V., at the request of King Philip III. *"Flush'd with good fortune, and too bold From victories so ofttimes told, De Garay must have been possest To think of lying down to rest Midst savages by night and day, Tracking his path, like beasts of prey, Without a guard to sound alarm : What wonder dire mishap befell That gallant crew ?" Barco Centenera's Argentina, Canto xxiv. Commercial Policy of Spain in the Provinces of the Rio de la Plata Contraband Trade of the English and Portuguese-Disputes and War in consequence Establishment of the Viceregal Government at Buenos Ayres Promulgation of the Free Trade Regulations of 1778—And increase of the Trade and Population. ABOUT a century had now elapsed since the first discovery of the Rio de la Plata, and out of the vast territories watered by that mighty stream and its tributaries, three extensive governments had been added to the possessions of the crown of Spain: those of Paraguay, Buenos Ayres, and Tucuman, the latter comprising the towns in the interior, which had been founded by the followers of Almagro and other adventurers from Peru-all richly endowed by Nature, and capable of being rendered of the greatest value to the trade and commerce of the mother country, but they did not produce the first and apparently only objects coveted by Spain and Spaniards, gold and silver; enough to doom them to something worse than neglect on the part of the ruling authorities. Still this perhaps would not have been of vital importance to the colonists had they been but permitted to send their produce, such as it was, to market, and to receive in exchange from Spain such European articles as they required for the supply of their own wants; but this was prohibited, absolutely at first, and subsequently under such miserable conditions as were alone enough to destroy all incitement to industry and all chance of fairly developing the capabilities of the new settlements. The merchants of Seville, who had obtained a monopoly of the supply of Peru, as well as Mexico, by means of the periodical fairs held at Portobello, over which they had the entire command, regulating as they pleased the prices not only of what they sold, but of what they bought, regarded the prospect of any new opening by way of the Rio de la Plata with extreme jealousy, and exerted their interest but too successfully to obtain prohibitory and restrictive enactments against all trade with Buenos Ayres, lest it should become the channel for the introduction of European goods into Peru, and so interfere with the sale of their periodical shipments by the galleons for the Isthmus of Panamá. In vain the Buenos Ayreans petitioned and remonstrated against this injustice; all they could obtain for some years was, leave to export annually to the Portuguese settlements in Brazil, or to the coast of Guinea, 2000 fanegas of wheat, 500 quintals of jerked beef, and 500 more of tallow. In 1618 this was extended to a permission to send two vessels yearly to Spain, the burthen of which was limited to 100 tons each; and lest even this concession should lead to the introduction of goods for Peru, insignificant as the quantity must necessarily have been, a custom house was established at Cordova to levy a duty of 50 per cent. on all goods carried that way, and to stop altogether any extraction of gold or silver from Peru for Buenos Ayres. To any further extension of the trade the Consulados of Seville and Lima made the most strenuous and effectual opposition.* All commercial intercourse with the other colonies of Spain in the same hemisphere was prohibited under the most severe penalties; and with the exception of an occasional vessel, which for the benefit of some favoured individual obtained a special licence to carry out a cargo thither, the trade of the Rio de la Plata continued to be restricted by the miserable regulations above mentioned for nearly the whole of the first century of the existence of Buenos Ayres, two yearly ships being deemed sufficient to supply the wants of three populous provinces. The wonderful water communications of South America seemed only to have been discovered by the Spaniards to * Memorias Historicas sobre la Legislacion y Gobierno del Comercio de los Españoles con sus Colonias, &c., por el Sr. Rafael Antunez y Acevedo, Ministro del Supremo Consejo de las Indias. Madrid, 1797. CHAP. V. PRODUCES CONTRABAND TRADE. 59 be closed by the wretched policy of their government for every useful purpose to which nature appeared to have designed them. In 1715, after the Treaty of Utrecht, the English obtained the Asiento, or contract for supplying the Spanish colonies in America with African slaves; in virtue of which they had leave to form an establishment, amongst other places, at Buenos Ayres, and to send thither four ships annually with 1200 negroes, the value of which they were permitted to export in produce of the country; and, although they were strictly forbidden to introduce any goods other than those necessary for their own establishments, under pain of their being confiscated and publicly burnt, the temptation to evade these regulations was soon found to be irresistible amongst a people who were absolutely in want of clothing, and ready to pay any price for it; and the Asiento ships became, as might have been expected, the means of carrying on a contraband traffic, which, however at variance with the treaty stipulations, was justified by a necessity which recognized no other law. The local authorities appear to have had neither the will nor the power to put down a trade which supplied the most pressing wants of the colony, and the profits of which were shared by the native capitalists. If they did occasionally make a show of exercising their right to visit the ships, it was an empty threat, little heeded by men who were looked upon with almost as much dread as the buccaneers who had so long been the terror of all that part of the world. Funes mentions the case of one Captain King, the commander of an English vessel called "The Duke of Cambridge," belonging to the Company, which had arrived in the river richly laden with European goods, who, when the Spanish officers went off to visit him conformably to the regulations, threatened to fire upon them, and set them openly at defiance. Another of these ships, "The Carteret," he says, was well known to have left the Rio de la Plata for London, with two millions of dollars in specie and seventy thousand dollars' worth of hides, in return for European goods which she had clandestinely sold in the colony: and so this trade was carried on till 1739, when Spain attempting to stop it by her guardacostas, and England resisting, the two powers became involved in open hostilities, which put an end to the Asiento. After the capture of Portobello by the English, Registerships, as they were called, were permitted for the first time to proceed direct round Cape Horn for the supply of the inhabitants of the shores of the Pacific-a great boon to the people of those countries; but no relief was given to those of the vast provinces of the Rio de la Plata, where the same restrictions on the trade were continued, although the main reason for imposing them originally alleged no longer existed, viz. the maintenance of that monopoly which the fairs of Portobello ensured to the merchants of Seville and Lima.* In the mean time the English were not the worst contrabandists in the river Plate. The Treaty of Utrecht, which had given them the Asiento, secured to the Portuguese the important settlement of Colonia del Sacramento, on the eastern shore of the river, directly opposite to Buenos Ayres-a position which afforded them every facility of communication with the neighbouring settlements of the Spaniards; and, although by the same treaty the crown of Portugal was solemnly engaged to prohibit all smuggling, not only were the provinces of Buenos Ayres, Paraguay, and Tucuman thenceforward abundantly supplied through this channel with European goods, but they were carried into the heart of Peru, and sold there at lower prices than the same articles sent to Lima by the merchants of Seville, viâ Panamá. Foreign traders and foreign goods superseded those of Spain, and the mother country lost not only a market for her own manufactures, but the duties upon the goods imported. The yearly freight of the galleons, which at * "Es de advertir, que extinguidos los galeones en 1740, y no restablecidos con las flotas en 1754, subsistió sin embargo la navegacion de Buenos Ayres con las mismas limitaciones que antes, no obstante haber faltado los dos poderosos motivos que les causaban, esto es, el fomento de las ferias de Portobello para los comerciantes de España, y el interes de los del Perú en que no hubiese otra puerta que aquella para la contratacion con sus Provincias.”—Acevedo, fol. 128. |