Under the administration of the above-named minister the _Creoles_ had to complain of the great partiality shown to Spaniards over themselves in the distribution of appointments, both civil and military, in the colonies--a mistake on the part of the Spanish Government all the greater on account of the period at which it took place, namely, whilst a struggle arising in the question of colonial rights was pending between Great Britain and her North-American possessions. It is certainly singular--indeed, it seems inexplicable--that Spain, of all countries, should have determined at this time to join with France in espousing the cause of the North Americans against England, whilst she herself was pursuing in her own colonies the very policy complained of. It was not long before the Spanish Crown was reminded by the South Americans that it had itself sanctioned the principle of the subject’s right to resistance against his sovereign on the plea of wrongs unredressed. [Sidenote: 1778.] The new commercial regulations, however, as a whole, were extremely advantageous to the colonies as well as to the mother country. _Buenos Ayres_, in particular, from being a nest of smugglers, soon rose to be one of the most important commercial cities of the New World. To take one example. Before the new regulations of 1778, the export of hides to Spain averaged about 150,000 yearly. It soon rose to between 700,000 and 800,000, whilst in one year [1783], on the conclusion of peace with England, the export attained to 1,400,000. Instead of the former two or three ships, there now sailed annually from seventy to eighty from the river _Plate_ to Spain. The population of the province of _Buenos Ayres_, under these altered circumstances, was doubled in twenty years, rising from 38,000 in 1778 to 72,000 in 1800. Until the latter part of the eighteenth century the inhabitants of the province of _Buenos Ayres_, possessing ample lands safe from incursions of the Indians, had no particular object in extending their possessions further south than the river _Salado_. The further region was left to the Indians, and was a _terra incognita_ until the publication in England, in the year 1774, of an account of _Patagonia_ by Father Falkner.