England, who might have founded constitutional monarchies in America, in spite of the Holy Alliance, pursued a commercial rather than a political policy. In 1829 Lord Aberdeen announced that his Government would not permit the establishment of a French or English prince, nor a prince of any other European dynasty, in Colombia. He would accept only a Spanish prince, or the monarchy of Bolivar himself.[1] The Conde de Aranda proposed to the King of Spain that America should be divided into nations governed by the Infantas, but his plan was not followed up. Once the independence of America was a fact, and the despotism of Ferdinand VII. re-established, no Spanish prince could be acceptable either to Argentina or Colombia. In the face of European indifference the tentative efforts of the monarchists spent themselves in America, and the continent acquired its definitive individuality. In opposition to the monarchies by divine right of the {65} Old World a liberal world came to birth; incoherent and incipient nationalities adopted equalitarian constitutions, which were, in the distant future, to flood their deserted territories with immense moral and material forces. From Mexico to Chili the same revolutionary fervour engendered the partial movements of 1808 to 1811. Conspirators similar to the Italian _carbonari_, lodges in which men spoke of liberty in the midst of ingenuous rites, and university students who had read the Encyclopædists, were preparing the great crusade. The year 1809 was the first of the Revolution. On the 1st of January there was a popular rising in Buenos-Ayres; on the 16th of July a revolt at La Paz; on the 2nd of August a meeting took place at Quito. In 1806 an English expedition attacked Buenos-Ayres. At a venture, on his way home from Africa, an officer who entertained ambitions in the direction of new territory and new sources of wealth--Sir Home Popham--invaded the capital of the viceroyalty of La Plata. This city was defended not by the legitimate Spanish authority, but by a noble _caudillo_, who was soon to be a popular viceroy: Santiago de Liniers, the hero of the "Reconquest." In this struggle against the imperialist invader the Argentine people found the first revelation of nationality. First they freed themselves from the English; then from the Spaniards. On the 25th of May, 1810, the _cabildo abierto_ (the municipality and the people), who had united on the 22nd, demanded the dismissal of the viceroy, and elected a governmental and revolutionary _junta_, patriotic but undecided. As early as 1808, in Montevideo, a _junta_ formed in the heat of a violent popular commotion had turned against the viceroy of Buenos-Ayres.