The “impelling cause” was the Protector himself.  Ambitious beyond all bounds, but with a capacity singularly incommensurate with his ambition, he believed that money could accomplish everything.  Monteagudo supplied this literally by plunder and cruelty, whilst San Martin recklessly flung it away in ostentation and bribes.  In return for the means of prodigality, the Minister was permitted to carry on the Government just as he chose, the Protector meanwhile indulging in the “otium cum dignitate” at his country palace near La Legua—­his physical powers prostrated by opium and brandy, to which he was a slave, whilst his mental faculties day by day became more torpid from the same debilitating influence.  This was well known to me, and alluded to in my letter to him of August 7th, 1821, in which I adjured him to banish his advisers and act as became his position.  I now mention these things, not to cast a slur on San Martin, but for the opposite purpose of averting undue reproach, though my bitter enemy.  The enormities committed in his name were for the most part not his, but Monteagudo’s; for, to paraphrase the saying of a French wit, “San Martin reigned, but his Minister governed.”  Duplicity and cunning were San Martin’s great instruments when he was not too indolent to wield them; and while he was wrapped in ease, his Minister superadded to these qualities all the cruelty and ferocity which sometimes converts a ruler into a monster, as the Limenos very appropriately designate him.  San Martin was not innately cruel, though, as in the execution of the Carreras, he did not hesitate to sacrifice men of far greater patriotism and ability than himself, regarding them as rivals; but he would not, as Monteagudo did, have endeavoured to tempt me ashore to the house of Torre Tagle, for the purpose of assassinating me; nor, failing in this, would he as Monteagudo also did, have liberated a convict for the express purpose of murdering me on board my own ship.  At this distance of time these things may be mentioned, as there can be no delicacy in thus alluding to Monteagudo, who, having lived the life of a tyrant, died the death of a dog; for having sometime afterwards imprudently returned to the Peruvian capital, he was set upon and killed in the streets by the enraged Limenos.

This bad commencement of the Peruvian Government subsequently entailed on the country years of misery and civil war, from intestine feuds and party strife—­the natural results of the early abuse which unhappily inaugurated its liberation.  No such features have been exhibited in Chili, where the maritime force under my command at once and for ever annihilated the power of Spain, leaving to the mother country neither adherents nor defenders, so that all men agreed to consolidate the liberty which had been achieved.  The same good results followed my expulsion of the Portuguese fleets and army from Brazil, where, whatever may have been the contentions of the parties into which