autonomy was already abroad in Spanish America, and in every quarter ambitious men were quoting the precedent of the revolt of the Thirteen United Colonies from Great Britain in the previous generation. Truly Spain had committed an unwise act when she joined France in wrecking the British domination in North America. She revenged an old grudge successfully, but she taught her own colonists a lesson impossible to forget and easy to copy. The Peninsular War had hitherto been maintained in no small degree by the money which kept flowing in from America: what would happen if the treasure-ships with their regular supply of silver dollars from the mines of Mexico and Peru ceased altogether to come in? Already affairs were looking so threatening that, despite of all the needs of the campaign at home, reinforcements were being sent out to the New World from Cadiz and from Corunna: the Army of Galicia, as we shall presently see, was nearly put out of action in the spring of 1812 by the dispatch of an over-great proportion of its trained artillerymen to America[137]. Some French observers of the situation formed the idea that the Spaniards, if pressed to a decision between the possible loss of their colonies and the chance of obtaining a free hand by peace with Napoleon, might make the choice for empire rather than freedom. By acknowledging Joseph Bonaparte as king, and coming into the Napoleonic system, they might be able to turn their whole strength against the discontented Americans. This idea had one fatal error: any Spaniard could see that submission to France meant war with Great Britain: and then the way across the Atlantic would be closed. The British government would be forced into an alliance with the colonists; it had already thought of this device in the old days before Napoleon’s invasion of the Peninsula. Whitelock’s unhappy Buenos Ayres expedition in 1807 had been sent out precisely to take advantage of the discontent of the Americans, and in the hope that they would rise against the mother country if promised assistance. The adventurer Miranda had spent much time in pressing this policy on the Portland cabinet. Whitelock’s descent on the Rio de la Plata, it is true, had been as disappointing in the political as in the military line: he had got no help whatever from the disaffected colonists. But feeling in America had developed into much greater bitterness since 1807: in 1812 actual insurrection had already broken out. British aid would not, this time, be rejected: the malcontents would buy it by the grant of liberal trading concessions, which the Cadiz government, even in its worst time of trouble, had steadily refused to grant. There was every chance, therefore, that a policy of submission to Napoleon would ensure the loss of America even more certainly and more rapidly than a persistence in the present war. It does not seem that any person of importance at Cadiz ever took into serious consideration the idea of throwing up