At first, the several provinces that revolted, and which had established new governments, most solemnly declared, that it was not their intention to separate from the crown of Spain, but to govern themselves in such a manner as would secure to that crown the possession of America. The Regency of Spain, however, invested with the authority to govern the peninsula, insisted on the prerogative of governing the American colonies, forgetting that the famous grant of America made by Pope Alexander VI. annexed America to the crowns of Castile and Arragon, and not to the nation nor to any representative body belonging to that nation. Every individual that was apprehended during the first years of commotion was treated as a traitor. At Quito the words "constituted authorities" contained in the oath which was administered were converted into high treason, and there is no doubt but Arrechaga would have solicited the sentence of capital punishment on all those who had taken it, had not their number included many of his friends. Declarations of independence, and manifestos containing the motives for at once separating from the mother country, now began to circulate among the natives of Peru; and although some of them contained exaggerations, and the government of Lima became possessed of copies of them, yet such was the apathy or the timidity of the chiefs, that no attempt at refutation was ever made. The following are translations of papers from Venezuela, which fully express all the grievances of which the Hispano-Americans complained. They were drawn up for the purpose of instilling into the minds of their countrymen a determination to shake off those grievances, and to convince the world at large that the insurrection of the Spanish colonies had become a matter of necessity and not of choice: "Manifesto made to the world by the confederation of Venezuela in South America, of the reasons on which it founds its absolute independence of Spain, and of every other foreign power. Done by the general Congress of the United States, and ordered to be published. "Spanish America, condemned for more than three centuries to exist only for the purpose of increasing the political preponderance of Spain, without the least influence in, or participation of her greatness, would, according to the order of events in which she had no other part than that of sufferance, have been the victim and the sacrifice of the disorder, corruption, and conquest, which have disorganized the nation her conqueror, if the instinct of self-preservation had not dictated to the Americans, that the moment of action had arrived, and that it was time to reap the fruits of three centuries of patience and forbearance.