ned the
Catholic faith and regarding him as a godless despot who had made
the Pope a captive, refused to recognize the French pretender. Until
Ferdinand VII could be restored to his throne, therefore, the colonists
had to choose whether they would carry on the administration under
the guidance of the self-constituted authorities in Spain, or should
themselves create similar organizations in each of the colonies to take
charge of affairs. The former course was favored by the official element
and its supporters among the conservative classes, the latter by the
liberals, who felt that they had as much right as the people of the
mother country to choose the form of government best suited to their
interests.

Each party viewed the other with distrust. Opposition to the more
democratic procedure, it was felt, could mean nothing less than
secret submission to the pretensions of Joseph Bonaparte; whereas the
establishment in America of any organizations like those in Spain surely
indicated a spirit of disloyalty toward Ferdinand VII himself. Under
circumstances like these, when the junta and its successor, the council
of regency, refused to make substantial concessions to the colonies,
both parties were inevitably drifting toward independence. In the phrase
of Manuel Belgrano, one of the great leaders in the viceroyalty of La
Plata, "our old King or none" became the watchword that gradually shaped
the thoughts of Spanish Americans.

When, therefore, in 1810, the news came that the French army had overrun
Spain, democratic ideas so long cherished in secret and propagated so
industriously by Miranda and his followers at last found expression in
a series of uprisings in the four viceroyalties of La Plata, Peru,
New Granada, and New Spain. But in each of these viceroyalties the
revolution ran a different course. Sometimes it was the capital
city that led off; sometimes a provincial town; sometimes a group of
individuals in the country districts. Among the actual participants
in the various movements very little harmony was to be found. Here
a particular leader claimed obedience; there a board of self-chosen
magistrates held sway; elsewhere a town or province refused to
acknowledge the central authority. To add to these complications, in
1812, a revolutionary Cortes, or legislative body, assembled at Cadiz,
adopted for Spain and its dominions a constitution providing for
direct representation of the colonies in oversea administrat