most cruel privations. Hundreds have perished by this and other modes of torture, and the gallows and garote seem never to be unoccupied. Was it not the bleaching skeleton of the venerable Hermano, whom I well knew for his wisdom and patriotism, which I beheld, even as I entered, hanging in chains over the gateway of your city? Was he not the victim of his wealth and love of country? Who among you is secure? He dared but to deliver himself as a man, and as he was suffered to stand alone, he was destroyed. Had you, when he spoke, but prepared yourselves to act, flung out the banner of resistance to the winds, and bared the sword for the last noble struggle, Hermano had not perished, nor were the glorious work only now to be begun. But which of you, involved in the same peril with Hermano, will find the friend, in the moment of his need, to take the first step for his rescue? Each of you, in turn, having wealth to tempt the spoiler, will be sure to need such friendship. It seems you do not look for it among one another--where, then, do you propose to find it? Will you seek for it among the Cartagenians--among the other provinces--to Bolivar _without_? Vain expectation, if you are unwilling to peril any thing for yourselves _within_! In a tyranny so suspicious and so reckless as is yours, you must momentarily tremble lest ye suffer at the hands of your despot. True manhood rather prefers any peril which puts an end to this state of anxiety and fear. Thus to tremble with apprehension ever, is ever to be dying. It is a life of death only which ye live--and any death or peril that comes quickly at the summons, is to be preferred before it. If, then, ye have hearts to feel, or hopes to warm ye--a pride to suffer consciousness of shame, or an ambition that longs for better things--affections for which to covet life, or the courage with which to assert and to defend your affections, ye cannot, ye will not hesitate to determine, with souls of freemen, upon what is needful to be done. Ye have but one choice as men; and the question which is left for ye to resolve, is that which determines, not your possessions, not even your lives, but simply your rank and stature in the world of humanity and man."