most trying questions of legislative wisdom; and such as few legislators have ever consented to learn from any other experience than their own.

* It must further be confessed, that no two cases in history are so precisely parallel, as the first view of some striking points of resemblance induces superficial observers to imagine; and that there are points of difference as well as of likeness between the contests of this country with her colonies, and that of Spain with hers m the present day, which, though they do not destroy the warning force of example, yet forbid too hasty an inference as to the ultimate issue of the contest. In both cases there is a mother-country struggling with her colonies, in both cases those colonies are in America. The general difficulties therefore of distant enterprize and uncertain communication, of armies to be transported, to be recruited, and maintained across the ocean, are in both cases the same in nature if not in degree; and the general principles of justice and moderation, of Christian forbearance, and of mutual and timely concession, are and ought to be in both cases, as in all other possible cases, the same. But when we have admitted these general similitudes, we have disposed of nearly all the points in which the two cases are really alike. The rest of their most remarkable characteristics are such as widely distinguish them from each other. Of these distinctions, while some are more favourable to the cause of the colonies, others to that of the mother-country, all conspire to make the case a more difficult and complicated one than that which is held out to them as a precedent. Spain, for instance, has greater military disadvantages in the struggle than this country had to contend against in that with the colonies of North America; her greater distance from the most valuable of her colonies; her own comparative weakness; and the original and inveterate sins of her colonial system. Politically considered, the "question which she has to decide is a more difficult one. The Anglo-Americans, an active and enlightened people, animated by the spirit and information derived from the mother-country, contended, as they had done in the preceding century, with pertinacious zeal for a civil right, the grant of which, in the early part of the contest, might have restored their tranquillity, and preserved their allegiance. The South Americans, to use a legal phrase, plead the general issue against Spain; they are altogether at variance with the mother-country, not on some single insulated point, which grows out of their admitted relations, and might be adjusted on its Vown merits, leaving those relations unchanged and unimpaired, but upon the whole scheme and system of those relations themselves. On the one hand, therefore, Spain is less powerful to coerce, on the

other

other hand she may reasonably be less willing to give up all that is required of her:--we say reasonably, not in the sense of approving of the oppressive and impolitic system of trade and of government of Spain over her colonies; not as putting out of sight the increased spirit of intelligence and information, which pervades not only the colonies but the world, and which renders the colonial system of Spain obsolete and inapplicable to the present state of things;not as undervaluing the successful example of the United States, as a caution to Spain how much she hazards by a continuance of the contest:-we mean simply to say that it is natural-and it is sofor any country not to surrender without a struggle, or while it has yet the means of struggling for them, long established possessions of immense value, and long cherished prejudices connected with recollections of national power and glory. We state this--not as what Spain ought to feel, but as what it is natural that she should feel; not as a laudable motive for indefinite perseverance; but as a practical difficulty (such as did not exist in the case of this country) in the way of unlimited concession. If it took England some time and some teaching before she would consent to repeal a taxit cannot be thought surprizing that Spain should hesitate to surrender an empire. Nor is it more wonderful that this struggle should be national in Spain, than that the American war should have been, in its origin and principle, (as it unquestionably was,) popular in Eugland.

Independently of the evil influence of the Spanish colonial system, and of the general tendency of colonies to outgrow restraint, there has existed a peculiar and immediate cause, which might have severed the union between any colony and any mother-country, in、 the events of the war in the Peninsula, and the manner in which the interests of America were treated by the successive temporary governments of that kingdom. The authority of Spain was so relaxed, the intercourse so rare, during the first years of the war, that the colonies had subsided into a state of virtual independence, long before they had determined to assume it. They had received no intelligence from Europe, but the vague reports of timid or Areacherous refugees; they were told that Spain was conquered and overrun by the French armies; they were distracted by the preten sions and squabbles of rival Juntas. At length the Cortes of Spain were assembled, and deluded the Americans with hopes of attention and relief; but when, instead of any substantial reforms, they were treated with dull dissertations on the Rights of Man and on the dignity of human nature;—when, instead of a proportionate share in the national representation, the number of deputies assigned to them was so scanty, and so ill-chosen, that their interests had ob

viously

viously no chance of a fair consideration in the numerous and partial assembly:-and when, as the last aggravation, Cadiz, the barbour of monopoly, the town whose prosperity had been the fruit of their grievances, became the residence of this assembly; and the merchants of Cadiz, the advisers and dictators both of the Cortes and the government; the most strenuous advocates for the sove reignty of the mother-country could not reasonably deny that the colonies derived from such treatment a powerful justification of their conduct; nor blame them if the superstitious loyalty with which they had hitherto united allegiance to Ferdinand VII. with the com plaints of their grievances, was overborne, not only by the weight of ancient oppressions, but by the disappointment of new and rational hopes, and by the apprehension of becoming, against their will, subjects to the French empire.

Here again, however, our present concern is not so much with motives as with facts. By the process which we have described, the alienation of the colonies has been rendered so much the more complete; and by so much the more hopeless is the task of Spain to reconquer or reclaim them.

But if these circumstances enhance the difficulties of the mothercountry and forbid the expectation of unconditional submission on the part of the colonies, there are other reasons for not anticipating with confidence the same unqualified success to the colonies in a struggle for absolute independence, which crowned the efforts of their brethren in the northern division of the new world. And these reasons grow mainly out of the essential dissimilarity in the history, habits, and composition of the society in the two countries.

The original settlers from England in North America were for the most part an austere, frugal, and industrious people; the hardships and privations of their early establishment were not endured with the inspiring feelings of military adventurers, but borne with the patience of religious submission; the purity of their morals, tinged with no small portion of the fanaticism which caused their emigration, kept them from promiscuous intercourse with the female Indians: and hence an unmixed race was continued, among whom there was no distinction of cast or complexion to introduce a difference in political rights, which, wherever it has occurred, has been the fruitful source of political contention. As no great inequality of property, the principal cause of political power, existed, there was no great inequality of education among those born in the country; and though none enjoyed what in Europe would be cousidered a liberal education, none were so destitute of knowledge as the mass of the labourers in most countries of Europe. The attention of the people was turned either to agriculture or commerce ;)

fon

for as the profit to be derived from the liberal professions was but inconsiderable, in a country where no dignified clergy, no lucrative official vocations, and neither army nor navy existed, the inducement for youth to devote themselves to those employments was very inconsiderable; and the settlers having fortunately soon become convinced that no mines of gold or silver existed in the country, the speculative, or rather the gambling business of mining never withdrew their attention from the surer roads to independence. lu agriculture, they were allowed the most perfect freedom; there were no lands either in mortmain or under entail ; and they were at liberty to cultivate whatever productions the soil would yield, without taxes, without rent, and without tythes. The external commerce was indeed restricted to the British dominions; but their ins ternal commerce, as well as that with all the other provinces under the government of their sovereign, was perfectly free, and the only imposts which they paid were for the mere purposes of their local government and police. The great manufactory, that of shipbuilding, and that important branch of industry the fisheries, were totally unfettered. They enjoyed a free press, and though most of their best books were imported from England, there was a sufficiency of elementary books and periodical journals printed in the colonies for the diffusion of a considerable portion of knowledge. The laws were generally understood, (their foundation being the common law of England, much simplified in practice,) and, though this understanding begot a spirit of litigation, were purely and fairly administered.

This population, situated in a climate not the most salubrious nor on a soil the most fertile, increased in numbers and in wealth with unexampled rapidity and as the whole country is intersected with navigable rivers, and the sea-shore well furnished with commodious harbours, the inducements to commerce more than compensated for the ungenial properties of the climate and soil's

That a population originating in republican principles, and strengthened in them by all the institutions which were familiar to their observation, should wish to escape from the government of the mother-country rather than submit to taxation from it, is perhaps natural; and the considerations of justice, of right, and of gratitude are not here in question. The habits of the country, their laws, their judges, their religion, their customs, their manners and their property suffered so little change by the transition from sa colonial to an independent existence, that the difference, had there been no war, would scarcely have been perceptible. Happily too for them, the change took place before the compendious catechism of the rights of man had been promulgated: their patriots were not atheists, nor their leaders robbers; their men of property, education

and

and morals took the lead, and the physical power of the poor and the profligate was not set up under the pretended character of the sovereign people, to plunder, to expatriate, or to murder their more respectable fellow citizens. The mobs of the Fauxbourgs of Paris, the Sans-culottes of Copenhagen house, or of Spa-fields, were not yet deemed the oracles of political science, nor appealed to as the voice of inspired wisdom.

In this picture of British American society many of the shades must be varied, as we extend it to the southward. From Pensylvania to Georgia the number of slaves introduced from Africa produced a difference of character in the white population; but the differeut races were generally kept distinct, and when that was not the case, the mixed races, from the smallness of their number, were not distinguished by the laws if they were freemen, though their rank or station in society, more regulated by manners than by law, was always inferior to that of the white inhabitants. It is not

material to mark the discriminative features of the different classes of the republicans in the northern and the southern parts of British America; in Boston they were democratic, in Charlestown rather aristocratic; but their aristocracy and their democracy were easily reconcileable in a common cause.

Comparing the population of Spanish with that of British America, we shall at every step be struck with the wonderful difference in origin, in progress, and in present situation. The conquerors from Spain, instead of the frugal, laborious and moral description of our English settlers, partook of the ferocity and superstition of an earlier and less enlightened period. The warriors who had exterminated the Mahomedanism of Granada were readily induced to propagate their own religion by the sword, and that religion not a moral and self-denying faith, but a ritual compatible with the grossest debauchery, the most ferocious cruelty, and the most insatiate thirst for gold. Their patient endurance of hunger, fatigue, and inclement weather was the hardihood of the soldier combined with the zeal of the religious missionary. As few or no women accompanied the first settlers, their intercourse with native females produced a race of successors of a most anomalous character, and these in a few generations mixing with the slaves imported from Africa, still further increased the different classes, who, in process of time, more by the rules of society than by the influence of the laws, assumed a variety of ranks according to their greater or less affinity to the white race. From this mixture of colours and castes arose a degree of inequality in property scarcely to be paralleled in any other country, which has continued to the present period. Some of the nobility of Mexico enjoy revenues derived from land and mines of more than £100,000 per ann. while thousands of the