Commercial and more material distinctions which favoured Spain as against her colonies remained equally marked.  Bartolome Mitre has appropriately explained the situation which preceded the Revolution: 

“The system of commercial monopoly which Spain adopted with respect to America immediately on the discovery of the Continent was as disastrous to the motherland as to the colonies.  Employing a fallacious theory in order that the riches of the New World should pass to Spain, and that the latter country should serve as sole provider to her colonies, all the legislation was in the first instance directed to this end.  Thus in America all industries which might provide competition with those of the Peninsula were forbidden.  In order that this monopoly might be centralized, the port of Seville (and afterwards that of Cadiz) was made the sole port of departure and of entry for the vessels carrying the merchandise between the two continents.  In order to render the working of this system doubly efficacious, no commercial communication was permitted between the colonies themselves, and the movements of all merchandise were made to converge at a single point.  This scheme was assisted by the organization of the galleon fleets, which, guarded by warships, united themselves into a single convoy once or twice a year.  Portobello (with Panama on the other side of the narrow isthmus) was the sole commercial harbour of South America.  Merchandise introduced here was sent across the isthmus and down the Pacific coast, and eventually penetrated inland as far as Potosi.  To this place the colonists of the south and of the Atlantic coast were obliged to come in order to effect their negotiations, and to supply themselves with necessities at a cost of from 500 to 600 per cent. above the original price.  These absurd regulations, violating natural laws and the rules of good government, as well as the colonial monopoly, could only have emanated from the madness of an absolute power supported by the inertia of an enslaved people....  When Spain, enlightened by experience, wished to alter her disastrous system of exploitation, and actually did so with sufficient intelligence and generosity, it was already too late.  She had lost her place as a motherland, and with it America as a colony.  No bond, whether of force, affection, or of any other interest, linked the disinherited sons to the parent country.  The separation was already a fact, and the independence of the South American colonies merely a question of time and opportunity.”

What would have happened had the position of Spain herself in Europe remained unimpaired is idle to conjecture, but it is practically certain, with the new light which was now beginning to flood the new Continent, that the struggle for independence would have been postponed for a few years only.

The first herald of the great struggle for liberty which was to ensue was Francisco Miranda.  The character of Miranda resembled not a little that of Bolivar.  Both men were of exalted and enthusiastic temperaments; both were skilled in the arts of oratory and the management of men, and both possessed a visionary side.  For each the situation in the New World formed an ample and, indeed, justifiable field.