The autocratic government under which the Spanish colonists in America lived exercised a notable influence on the opinions and theories held by colonial writers on politics in the seventeenth and the early part of the eighteenth century; but in the later decades of the eighteenth century the new creole-mestizo society, or party, revolted against the hitherto current political philosophy and accepted doctrines that had found expression particularly in the United States and in France. While the government of the Spanish-American dependencies was in process of development, many persons very naturally became interested in the new laws and the gradual growth of the system. As new phases of the organization appeared, new questions arose that attracted attention. In the British colonies, where provision was made for a large measure of popular local control, interest in governmental affairs found expression in addresses, projects of law, and debates in popular meetings and legislative assemblies, and through the still more popular exponent of opinion furnished by the public press. In the enjoyment of these facilities, there was almost no incentive to write or publish formal treatises on political subjects. The Spanish colonies, on the other hand, presented a very different state of affairs. The people had no voice in the colonial government; the popular orator, except in the pulpit, did not exist; there were no legislative assemblies; the viceroys, the governors, the judges of the audiencia, and the corregidores were appointed by the king or by the Council of the Indies acting for the king; only the municipal council, when not dominated by a superior authority, stood as a feeble representative of the people. The laws under which the colonists were governed were framed and issued by the king and the Council, who ruled autocratically through officials rendered practically absolute by their distance from the supreme head of the state and by the difficulties and the infrequency of the communication. Any discussion of current political or governmental questions had, therefore, to take the form of a treatise, a report, or a petition to the king or the Council of the Indies. During the greater part of the colonial period no facilities for publication existed except in Lima, the city of Mexico, and Spain; for no printing presses existed in Spanish America, except in these two capitals and certain Jesuit houses, until the last part of the eighteenth century; and until the last decade of that century there was no periodical in the South American dependencies through which public questions might be discussed. [Sidenote: Question of Chilean Indians]