As a matter of fact, none took the trouble to grant these titles in return for merit or service; it was necessary to buy them and to pay for them. Their grandeur was strictly local. Thus a Marquis or a Count in Lima or elsewhere in the Southern Continent would have been crassly unwise to leave the shores of South America, for once in Spain his title fell from him like a withered leaf; he became plain "Senor" and nothing beyond, for in Spain these colonial distinctions were a matter for jeers and mockery. What remained, therefore, for the poor local noble but to hasten back to the spot where his nobility held good! It was better to bask as a Marquis in the sunshine of the south than to be cold-shouldered as a plebeian in stately Castile. Commercial and more material distinctions which favoured Spain as against her colonies remained equally marked. Bartolome Mitre has appropriately explained the situation which preceded the Revolution: "The system of commercial monopoly which Spain adopted with respect to America immediately on the discovery of the Continent was as disastrous to the motherland as to the colonies. Employing a fallacious theory in order that the riches of the New World should pass to Spain, and that the latter country should serve as sole provider to her colonies, all the legislation was in the first instance directed to this end. Thus in America all industries which might provide competition with those of the Peninsula were forbidden. In order that this monopoly might be centralized, the port of Seville (and afterwards that of Cadiz) was made the sole port of departure and of entry for the vessels carrying the merchandise between the two continents. In order to render the working of this system doubly efficacious, no commercial communication was permitted between the colonies themselves, and the movements of all merchandise were made to converge at a single point. This scheme was assisted by the organization of the galleon fleets, which, guarded by warships, united themselves into a single convoy once or twice a year. Portobello (with Panama on the other side of the narrow isthmus) was the sole commercial harbour of South America. Merchandise introduced here was sent across the isthmus and down the Pacific coast, and eventually penetrated inland as far as Potosi. To this place the colonists of the south and of the Atlantic coast were obliged to come in order to effect their negotiations, and to supply themselves with necessities at a cost of from 500 to 600 per cent. above the original price. These absurd regulations, violating natural laws and the rules of good government, as well as the colonial monopoly, could only have emanated from the madness of an absolute power supported by the inertia of an enslaved people.... When Spain, enlightened by