Don Martin de Mayorga, XLVII. Viceroy of New Spain. 1779–1783.
In consequence of the death of Bucareli the Audiencia assumed the government of New Spain until the appointment of his successor, and in the meanwhile, on the 18th of May, 1779, Charles III. solemnly declared war against England. The misunderstanding which gave rise to the revolutionary outbreak in the English colonies of North America was beginning to attract the notice of Europe. France saw in the quarrel between the Americans and the British an opportunity to humiliate her dangerous foe; and although Spain had no interest in such a contest, the minister of Charles, Florida Blanca, persuaded his master to unite with France in behalf of the revolted colonies. Spain, in this instance, as in the expulsion of the Jesuits, was, doubtless, submissive to the will of the French court, and willingly embraced an occasion to humble the pride or destroy the power of a haughty nation whose fleets and piratical cruisers had so long preyed upon the wealthy commerce of her American possessions. The Spanish minister did not probably dream of the dangerous neighbor whose creation he was aiding, north of the Gulf of Mexico. It is not likely that he imagined republicanism would be soon and firmly established in the British united colonies of America, and that the infectious love of freedom would spread beyond the wastes of Texas and the deserts of California to the plateaus and plains of Mexico and Peru. The policy was at once blind and revengeful. If it was produced by the intrigue of France, the old hereditary foe and rival of England, it was still less pardonable, for a fault or a crime when perpetrated originally and boldly by a nation sometimes rises almost into glory, if successful; but a second-hand iniquity, conceived in jealousy and vindictiveness, is as