element and its supporters among the conservative classes, the
latter by the liberals, who felt that they had as much right as
the people of the mother country to choose the form of government
best suited to their interests.

Each party viewed the other with distrust. Opposition to the more
democratic procedure, it was felt, could mean nothing less than
secret submission to the pretensions of Joseph Bonaparte; whereas
the establishment in America of any organizations like those in
Spain surely indicated a spirit of disloyalty toward Ferdinand
VII himself. Under circumstances like these, when the junta and
its successor, the council of regency, refused to make
substantial concessions to the colonies, both parties were
inevitably drifting toward independence. In the phrase of Manuel
Belgrano, one of the great leaders in the viceroyalty of La
Plata, "our old King or none" became the watchword that gradually
shaped the thoughts of Spanish Americans.

When, therefore, in 1810, the news came that the French army had
overrun Spain, democratic ideas so long cherished in secret and
propagated so industriously by Miranda and his followers at last
found expression in a series of uprisings in the four
viceroyalties of La Plata, Peru, New Granada, and New Spain. But
in each of these viceroyalties the revolution ran a different
course. Sometimes it was the capital city that led off; sometimes
a provincial town; sometimes a group of individuals in the
country districts. Among the actual participants in the various
movements very little harmony was to be found. Here a particular
leader claimed obedience; there a board of self-chosen
magistrates held sway; elsewhere a town or province refused to