As Peru had always shown a spirit of insubordination, which
required a more vigorous interposition of authority than was
necessary in the other colonies, it was resolved to send a
viceroy to that country, who should display a state, and be armed
with powers, that might make him a more fitting representative of
the sovereign. He was to be accompanied by a Royal Audience,
consisting of four judges, with extensive powers of jurisdiction,
both criminal and civil, who, besides a court of justice, should
constitute a sort of council to advise with and aid the viceroy.
The Audience of Panama was to be dissolved, and the new tribunal,
with the vice-king's court, was to be established at Los Reyes,
or Lima, as it now began to be called, - henceforth the
metropolis of the Spanish empire on the Pacific. *13
[Footnote 13: The provisions of this celebrated code are to be
found, with more or less - generally less - accuracy, in the
various contemporary writers. Herrera gives them in extenso.
Hist. General, dec 7 lib. 6, cap. 5.]
Such were some of the principal features of this remarkable code,
which, touching on the most delicate relations of society, broke
up the very foundations of property, and, by a stroke of the pen,
as it were, converted a nation of slaves into freemen. It would
have required, we may suppose, but little forecast to divine,
that in the remote regions of America, and especially in Peru,
where the colonists had been hitherto accustomed to unbounded
license, a reform, so salutary in essential points, could be
enforced thus summarily only at the price of a revolution.
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