against the French, and possibly this may have been in
the mind of Pitt. The American people were not as cold as the President,
however, on the subject of South America, and Francisco Miranda, a
voluntary exile from Venezuela on account of his republican principles,
succeeded in organizing a filibustering force in New York, one of the
members of which was a grandson of the President himself. The expedition
was defeated and nearly all engaged in it were captured by the Spaniards,
among them young William S. Smith, John Adams' grandson. Yrujo, the
Spanish Minister at Washington, offered to interpose in behalf of a
pardon for the young man, but President Adams declined to use his exalted
office to obtain any respite for the youth who had so unfortunately
proved his inheritance of the old Adams' devotion to liberty. "My blood
should flow upon a Spanish scaffold," wrote America's chief magistrate,
"before I would meanly ask or accept a distinction in favor of my
grandson." The young man's life was spared, however, and he returned to
the United States.

[1] Espana was hanged and quartered. A writer in the New York
_Sun_, commenting on Espana's death, said that "thus in the
eighteenth century Spain repeated the barbarism perpetrated by
England on William Wallace in 1305." It is unnecessary to go back
to William Wallace or off the American continent for an act of
barbarity similar to Espana's execution. In the same decade, one
McLean, a former resident, if not a citizen of the United States,
was hanged and quartered in Canada, by the sentence of a British
court, on a trumped up charge of having been engaged in a
treasonable conspiracy.

Francisco Miranda, who had made his escape to Barbadoes, raised a force
of four hundred men, with the assistance of the British, landed in
Venezuela, and proclaimed a provisional government. This expedition was
also unsuccessful, and Miranda retired under the protection of a British
man-of-war. At this time there was no general feeling in South America in
favor of independence. Although some scattering sparks from the sacred
altar of liberty had found their way into Spanish America;
notwithstanding the severity of the colonial system, and the corruptions
and abuses of power which everywhere prevailed; such was the habitual
loyalty of the creoles of America; such the degradation and
insignificance of the other races; so inveterate were