The latter I visited and conversed with the minister. He said there was no difficulty in landing religious books or papers and circulating the same, although the press is not free to print or publish any religion but the Catholic. He had imported and distributed Bibles in Spanish, and had placed them for sale in the book stores. Foreign books are landed _free of duty_. The revolution which raged so violently this season in Chili professed to be in favor of universal suffrage, and of absolute liberty of conscience, of speech, and of the press. The masses, so far as I am able to judge, are warm revolutionists, but they don't like to fight. The revolution cost some 5,000 lives, and ended in a general amnesty, without any alteration of the Government. But the people are sanguine in their hope--they think to accomplish their liberties in a few years. In the provinces of Buenos Ayres a long civil war has raged, which is now about terminating in favor of the more liberal party, aided by Brazil. Peru is tranquil. The public prints of Lima, its capital, have interested me much--they are in Spanish, and I have spent days in their perusal. The Government of Peru is much influenced by England and the United States. Its constitution guarantees liberty of the press, of speech, and of worship. But it seems to have remained a _dead letter_ on these points till the present year, in which the Congress Peruana has made a special law to carry out these general principles of liberty, making special provision for the liberty of other worship, and for Protestants to officiate in the holy _sacraments of matrimony and of burial_, which is a step ahead of even Protestant England (where all must go to the National Church for these things). Peru has also made a special treaty with Great Britain, in which all these liberties are guaranteed to British subjects there. These liberal measures have alarmed "His Holiness," the Pope of Rome, to such an extent that he has issued his letter of disfellowship of the Government Peruana, in which he denounces all these liberal measures as _anti-Catholic, un-Christian and heretical_. This official document, in the hands of the Archbishop of Peru and of his clergy, was brought to bear with considerable power against the liberal proceedings of the Government; but, in the meantime, a very learned and talented man (I suppose a clergyman), called Dr. Vigel, and many other writers come out against the Pope in the columns of the public prints. They denounce him in no measured terms as a usurper of more power than Peter of old, who, they say, meddled not with governments, wealth, or any other thing, but to preach the Gospel and catch fish.