Símon Bolívar, the Liberator | Page 6

became steeled and his heart prepared for great works, for works requiring the concentration of mind which can be given only by men who have no intimate human connections or obligations. As a South American orator lately declared:[1] "Neither Washington nor Bolívar was destined to have children of his own, so that we Americans might call ourselves their children."
Bolívar decided immediately to leave for Europe. Nothing could keep him in his own country. He had loved his wife and his wife only could have led him to accept a life of ease and comfort. He decided never to marry again and, perhaps to assuage the pain in his heart, he decided to devote his time to the study of the great problems of his country, and to bend all his energies and strength to their solution. At the end of 1803, he was again in Madrid, giving his wife's father the sad news of their great loss.
[Footnote 1: Atilano Carnevali, on the occasion of placing a wreath before Washington's statue in Caracas, July 4, 1920.]
From Madrid, Bolívar went to Paris, and was in the city when the Empire was established. All the admiration the man of the Republic had won from Bolívar immediately crumbled to dust before the young American. "Since Napoleon has become a king," said Bolívar, "his glory to me seems like the brilliancy of hell." He did not attend the ceremony of Napoleon's coronation, and made him the object of bitter attacks when among his own friends. He never hesitated to speak of the liberty of America with all his acquaintances, who enjoyed his conversation in spite of the ideas that he supported.
In the spring of 1805 he went on a walking tour to Italy, with his teacher and friend, don Simón Rodríguez. In Milan he saw Napoleon crowned as King of Italy, and then witnessed a great parade passing before the French Emperor. All these royal ceremonies increased his hatred of monarchy.
From Milan he went to Florence, Venice, Rome and Naples, studying everything, informing himself of all the currents of public opinion, and dreaming of what he intended to accomplish for his own people. While in Rome, he and his teacher went to Mount Aventin. There they denounced in an intimate talk the oppression of peoples and discussed the liberty of their native Venezuela. When their enthusiasm had reached its highest pitch, the young dreamer took the hand of his master, and at that historic spot, he made a solemn vow to free his country.
From Italy, he came to the United States, where he visited Boston, New York, Philadelphia and other towns, sailing from Charleston for Venezuela. He arrived in Caracas at the end of 1806.
Upon his return home, Bolívar devoted himself to the care and improvement of his estate. Yet his ideas continued to seethe, especially when the constant spectacle of the state of affairs in Venezuela stimulated this ferment of his mind.
Among the American colonies, Venezuela was not considered by Spain as one of the most important. Mexico and Perú, celebrated by their production of mineral wealth, were those which attracted most of the attention of the Spaniards. Venezuela was apparently poor, and certainly did not contribute many remittances of gold and silver to the mother country. It had been organized as a captaincy general in 1731, after having been governed in different ways and having had very little communication with Spain. It is said that from 1706 to 1722, not a single boat sailed from any Venezuelan port for Spain. Commercial intercourse between the provinces was forbidden, and local industries could not prosper because the purchase of the products of Spanish industries was compulsory for the natives, at prices set after all transportation expenses and high taxes were taken into account. The colonists were oppressed by taxes and kept in ignorance.
This state of affairs had produced a latent feeling of irritation and a desire for a change. The native white population read the books of the French philosophers, especially those of Rousseau and Montesquieu. The ideas proclaimed by the United States of America and those preached by the most radical men of the French Revolution were smuggled in and known in spite of prohibition.
At the middle of the eighteenth century, there had been a movement against the Compa?ía Guipuzcoana, established about 1730, and which greatly oppressed the people. This movement failed and its leaders were severely punished.
At the end of the eighteenth century, Spain allied herself with England to fight against France. This war ended in 1795 with the Treaty of Basel, by which Spain lost Santo Domingo to France. A year later, Spain allied herself with France against England, and the disastrous war which followed resulted in the loss of the island of Trinidad to England, by the Treaty of Amiens, in