1492 A. D. and the substance of the people in aggressive wars upon neighbouring States. Her Church suppressed freedom of thought, and thus, step by step, weakened and debased the national intellect. The Jews were expelled from Spain, and the country never recovered from the wound which the loss of her most industrious citizens inflicted. The easilygained treasure of the New World fired the minds of the people with a restless ambition, which did not harmonize with patient industry. The waste of life in war, and the eager rush to the marvellous gold-fields of America, left Spain insufficiently sup plied with population to maintain the industrial position which she had reached. Her manufactures began to decay, until early in the seventeenth century the sixteen thousand looms of Seville had sunk to four hundred. Agriculture shared the fall of the sister industries; and ere long Spain was able with difficulty to support her own diminished population. Her navy, once the terror of Europe, was ruined. Her merchant ships became the prey of enemies whose strength had grown as hers had decayed. The traders of England and Holland, setting at defiance the laws which she was no longer able to enforce, supplied her colonies with manufactures which she in her decline was no longer able to produce. The North American possessions of England became an inestimable blessing to England and to the human family, because they were the slow gains of patient industry. Their ownership was secured not by the sword, but by the plough. Nothing was done for them by fortune; the history of their growth is a record of labour, undismayed, unwearied, incessant. Every new settler, every acre redeemed from the wilderness, contributed to the vast aggregate of wealth and power which has been built up slowly, but upon foundations which are indestructible. The success of Spain was the demoralizing success of the fortunate gambler. Within the lifetime of a single generation ten or twelve million of Spaniards came into possession of advantages such as had never before been bestowed upon any people. A vast region, ten times larger than their own country, glowing with the opulence of tropical vegetation, fell easily into their hands. Products of field and of forest which were eagerly desired in Europe were at their call in boundless quantity. A constant and lucrative market was opened for their own productions. Millions of submissive labourers spared them the necessity of personal effort. All that nations strive for as their chief good-territorial greatness, power, wealth, ample scope for commercial enterprise-became suddenly the coveted possession of Spain. But these splendours served only to illustrate her incapacity, to hasten her ruin, to shed a light by which the world could watch her swift descent to the nether gloom of idleness, depopulation, insolvency, contempt. CHAPTER IV. REVOLUTION. OR three hundred years Spain governed the rich possessions which she had so easily won. At the close of that period the population was about sixteen million-a number very much smaller than the conquerors found on island and continent. The increase of three centuries had not repaired the waste of thirty years. Of the sixteen million two were Spaniards; the remainder were Indians, negroes, or persons of mixed descent. Her aim was to Spain ruled in a spirit of blind selfishness. wring from her tributary provinces the largest possible advantage to herself. Her administration was conducted by men sent out from Spain for that purpose, and no man was eligible for office unless he could prove his descent from ancestors of unblemished orthodoxy. It was held that men circumstanced as these were must remain for ever true to the pleasant system of which they formed part, and were in no danger of becoming tainted with colonial sympathies. This expectation was not disappointed. During all the years of her sordid and unintelligent rule, the servants of Spain were scarcely ever tempted, by any concern for the welfare of the colonists, to deviate from the traditional policy of the parent State. Corruption fostered by a system of government which inculcated the wisdom of a rapid fortune and an early return to Spain was excessive and audacious. Those Spaniards who had made their home in the colo nies were admitted to no share in the administration. Many of them had amassed great wealth; but yielding to the influences of an enervating climate and a repressive Government, they had become a luxurious, languid class, devoid of enterprise or intelligence. In course of years the poor remnants of the native population which had been bestowed, for a certain number of lives, upon the conquerors, reverted to the Crown, and their annual tribute formed a considerable branch of revenue. * The Indians had been long recognized by the law as freemen, but they were still in the remoter districts subjected to compulsory service on the fields and in the mines. They were no longer, however, exposed to the unrestrained brutality of a race which they were too feeble to resist. Officers were appointed in every district to inquire into their grievances and protect them from wrong. In their villages they were governed by their own chiefs, who were salaried by the Spanish Government; and they lived in tolerable contentment, avoiding, so far as that was possible, the unequal companionship which had brought misery so great upon their race. In the early years of the conquest, negroes were imported from Africa on the suggestion of Las Casas,† and for the purpose of staying the destruction of the native population. Negro labour was soon found to be indispensable, and the importation of slaves became a lucrative trade. The demand was large and constant; for the negroes perished so rapidly in their merciless bondage that in some of the islands one negro in every six died annually. France enjoyed for many years the advantage of supplying these victims. But England having been victorious over Spain in a great war, wrung from her 1713 A. D. * This tribute varied in the different provinces. In Mexico it was about four shillings annually, levied on every male between eighteen and fifty years of age. It produced latterly about half a million sterling from all the colonies, and was collected with difficulty, owing to the extreme poverty of the Indians. A suggestion of which the good man bitterly repented, when the enormous evils which sprang from it began to develop themselves. the guilty privilege of procuring for her the slaves who were to toil and die in her cruel service. After the Treaty of Utrecht, the Spanish colonists were forbidden to purchase negroes excepting from English vessels. 1548 A. D. Excepting Down to the period of the conquest the Indians had utterly failed to establish dominion over the lower animals. in Peru, there was almost no attempt made to domesticate, and in Peru it extended no higher than to the sheep. There was no horse on the continent; there were no cattle. It was the fatal disadvantage of being without mounted soldiers which made the subjugation of the Indians so easy. The Spaniards introduced the horse as the chief instrument of their success in war. From time to time as riders were killed in battle, or died smitten by disease, their neglected horses escaped into the wilderness. Fifty years after the discovery of the New World a Spaniard introduced cattle. On the boundless plains of the southern continent the increase of both In course of years countless millions of horses and of cattle wandered masterless among the luxuriant vegetation of the pampas. Their presence introduced an element which was wanting before in the population. The pastoral natives of the pampas, to whose ancestors the horse was unknown, have become the best horsemen in the world. They may almost be said to live in the saddle. They support themselves mainly by hunting and slaughtering wild cattle. The submissiveness of their fathers has passed away. They are rude, passionate, fierce; and, as the Spaniards found to their cost, they furnish an effective and formidable cavalry for the purposes of war. A few thousands of such horsemen would have rendered Spanish conquest impossible, and given a widely different course to the history of the continent. races was enormous. In spite of the indolence of the colonial Spaniards and the mischievous restrictions imposed by the mother country, the trade of the colonies had largely increased. Especially was |