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 NORTH AND SOUTH AMEEICA. 
 
 A 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 DISCOURSE 
 
 
 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 
 
 RHOD'E-ISLAND historical society, 
 
 
 
 
 
 DECEMBER 27, 18 6 5. 
 
 
 
 
 
 BY HIS EXCELLENCY. 
 
 
 
 
 
 DOMINGO FAUSTINO SARMIENTO, 
 
 
 
 
 
 ARGENTINE MINISTER TO THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 
 
 
 
 PROVIDENCE : 
 
 
 
 
 
 KNOWLE8, ANTHONY & CO., PRINTERS. 
 
 
 
 
 
 186 6. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 of California 
 Regional 
 Facility
 
 Universily ol California, Los Angeles 
 
 The 
 
 Fritz L. Hoffmann Collection 
 
 A Gift ol 
 
 Olga Mingo Hoffmann 
 
 1994
 
 NOETH AND SOUTH AMERICA. 
 
 DISCOURSE 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 RHODE-ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY, 
 
 DECEMBER 27, 1865. 
 
 BY HIS EXCELLENCY, 
 
 DOMINGO FAUSTINO SARMIENTO, 
 
 ARGENTINE MINISTER TO THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 PROVIDENCE : 
 KNOWLES, ANTHONY & CO., PRINTERS. 
 
 1 8 G 6 .
 
 

 
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 INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS 
 
 His Excellency DOMINGO FAUSTINO SARMIENTO 
 
 HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF EHODE ISLAND, 
 
 DELIVERED DECEMBER 27th, 1865. 
 
 Mr. President : 
 
 Some years ago, Col. Mitre and I received, through my 
 friend Mr. Edward A. Hopkins, the diplomas of honorary 
 members of this society. It was my duty on coming to the 
 United States, to occupy the seat you have offered me here, if 
 for no other reason, at least to express my gratitude. My 
 honorable friend, your Vice-President Arnold, has been kind 
 enough to procure me the opportunity of thus doing, by arrang- 
 ing this special meeting. Many years have now accumulated 
 over my head ; and I have travelled some thousands of leagues 
 during a life of almost constant movement, and of too much 
 attrition with men of diverse societies, to yield to the temptation 
 of believing that I have any title to distinction. 
 
 Our colleague, Don Bartolome Mitre, is now a General and 
 President of the Argentine Republic. His Majesty the Empe- 
 ror of Brazil considers him a worthy ally, and perhaps at this 
 moment the same field tent covers their heads. I recall this 
 fact to justify your election, although this General Mitre is also 
 a historian, a poet and a publicist, the only titles of value in this 
 ssembly.
 
 I will not carry the affectation of modestv so far as to insin- 
 uate that I have no claim to a similar consideration ; for some 
 of your book shelves contain traces, if not profound, certainly 
 numerous enough, that I also have gleaned in the field of let- 
 ters, and turned over at least, those materials of which history 
 is formed. Within a few days I have added thereto the "Life 
 of Lincoln" in Spanish, as a proof that I would add my grain 
 of sand to the examination and generalization of those facts 
 which most nearly interest you, because they interest us also. 
 But I do not admit that our election to your society was caused 
 by a previous knowledge of our historical labors. The ocean 
 is a bad conductor of South American thought, which cannot 
 presume to ask, like a cacicpue of the king of Bambarra in 
 Africa, what the queen of England, who probably was ignorant 
 of his existence, said of him. But a few years since, even a 
 grand historian of England, notwithstanding the community of 
 language, asked with disdain, " who reads an American book?" 
 
 But even as there can be no effect without a cause, it also 
 happens that extremes meet, and contrasts establish affinities: 
 and it may be that between the Rio de la Plata and Narraganset 
 Bay; between Buenos A vies and Providence; between the 
 northern and southern extremes of America, those currents and 
 mysterious attractions exist, which science is wont to meet with 
 between different substances. Perhaps it may thus be explained 
 how a South American is found seated among the members of 
 an historical society of one of those states which compose the 
 Pleiades of New-England; — Danaides whose vase is not bot- 
 tomless, like that of the ancient ones, judging from the won- 
 derful wealth which their industry and economy have accum- 
 ulated. 
 
 I had hardly visited your picturesque city when I met Mr. 
 George E. Church, whom I knew as a civil engineer in Buenos 
 Ayres, where he was commissioned by the government to 
 inspect our frontiers ; and wrote an important report indicating 
 a simple plan of defense against the savages, based upon the 
 study of our geography. Here, 1 find him a Colonel of Rhode 
 Island soldier.*, who wen 1 forth at the call of liberty in dan 
 as lie lias seen us in our country with sword buckled on for the
 
 same cause. Perhaps Mr. Church remembers with sympathy, 
 that people to whom he lent his intelligence, as also, the names 
 of those who knew how to appreciate his talent. 
 
 A little later I learnt that Mr. William Wheelwright, the 
 contractor of railways which are carrying to the Pampas the 
 civilizing snort of the locomotive, where formerly the neighing 
 of horses alone was heard, is a native of Newburyport. Then 
 the connection between your republic and ours became more 
 sensible, because the progressive genius of this son of New- 
 England, has made the two countries of Chili and the Argen- 
 tine Republic, his own field. 
 
 The company was formed in Rhode-Island which first 
 attempted to introduce American industry into sequestered 
 Paraguay, where it met the result which was to be feared from 
 the jealousy and suspicion of those gloomy governors, who, 
 from Dr. Francia to the last Lopez, inclusive, have with- 
 drawn it from contact with the exterior world. A government 
 which expelled dentists because the Paraguayans did not 
 require their services, (so says the official decree,) with much 
 more reason would destroy a growing industry in order to 
 monopolize every fountain of wealth. But even this unfortun- 
 ate result established relations between Rhode-Island and the 
 Rio de la Plata. I witnessed from the smiling shores of the 
 Tigre, in the Parana, the launch of the first little steamer which 
 navigated its waters, the property of this company; and those 
 who remember that they sent out her engine, belong to Rhode- 
 Island. 
 
 It fell to me as a member of the Senate of Buenos Ayres, to 
 grant the charter for the Northern Railway ; and he who planned, 
 organized and carried it out, was then the representative of 
 his Rhode -Island friends, to communicate life and movement 
 to those countx'ies. Now, Mr. Hopkins, whom I have already 
 mentioned, is engaged under another grant of the Argentine 
 government, in an enterprize to canalize the Capitan stream, a 
 small outlet of the gigantic Parana, thus to accelerate and 
 render more secure our fluvial navigation, and accumulate on 
 wharves and in warehouses, situated at the inner terminus of 
 his railway — the only spot on the coast of Buenos Ayres pro-
 
 tected from all gales — the wealth which descends from the 
 torrid zone. 
 
 Nor long ago, when on board of the steamer which conveyed 
 me hence to New-York, I met with the young mariner Captain 
 T. II. King, who told me that he would soon sail for the Rio 
 de la Plata, in a strainer owned in Rhode-Island, to build there 
 a marine railway for the repair of vessels of all sorts, like those 
 he had constructed already in Shangai, in China, with Rhode- 
 Island capital. I therefore believe it is possible that the coun- 
 try where the engineers, the steamers, the machines, and the 
 capital of Rhode-Island, are the American pioneers, may have 
 made known, for some time back, the names of those Argentine 
 public men who have given the most sympathetic reception to 
 this initiative, and among these names — I am proud to say it — 
 figures my own. 
 
 Other bonds between these two countries I met with here, 
 which I ought not to pass by. The attentive hospitality of our 
 Vice-President, the Hon. Samuel Greene Arnold, permitted 
 me to look over numerous Argentine documents in his library ; 
 among them almost forgotten writings of mv own. And in our 
 familiar conversation I discovered that he has traveled South 
 America from one extremity to the other, visited the Argentine 
 Republic, broken bread with the famous tyrant Rosas, and 
 frequented the society of dear friends of mine. In a book of 
 his notes, I saw mention made of the principal incidents of his 
 travels, together with the names and description of places, and 
 the aspect of society, the government, and contemporaneous 
 events. 
 
 But what was my surprise on visiting the library of Mr. 
 John Carter Brown, the distinguished lover of books, to meet 
 in Providence with the most complete, abundant, and instruct- 
 ive collection of Spanish authors, above all, those who have 
 written upon South America, from the first days of the conquest 
 to our epoch. After admiring so rich a treasure I could com- 
 prehend the praise of the talented English historian, Helps, 
 author of an excellent history of the Spanish conquest, where 
 he declares, that he procured from this library in Rhode-Island, 
 document* upon Spanish A.merica, which the library of the
 
 British museum could not furnish him. But I do not compre- 
 hend, unless we appeal to those mysterious sympathies of which 
 I spoke at the commencement, how it is that this treasure, 
 which South America would envy, is found in Providence. If, 
 for example, it was desired to write about the present war 
 between the Argentine and Uraguayan Republic and Brazil 
 as allies, against Paraguay, it would be necessary to come to 
 Rhode-Island to find in the rich collection of books upon the 
 Jesuit missionaries, and the wars between Spaniards and Por- 
 tuguese on questions of frontiers, the geographical description 
 of each portion of those countries, as well as the causes of sub- 
 sequent tyrannies, and of the present war, flowing from the 
 theocratic governments of the Guarani Missions. 
 
 In reference to my own country, but little good — save the 
 hospitable reception he met with — was the traveller Arnold 
 able to tell you. He visited it in 1848, during the darkest 
 period of its history, when two decades of an ignorant, cruel 
 and barbarous despotism had already run their course, of which 
 we should have had no example in history, if Philip II. during 
 the term of only one reign had not annihilated a nation for three 
 long centuries — perhaps forever. 
 
 Mr. Arnold will remember that upon the front of all the 
 public edifices of Buenos Ayres, and upon a red badge which 
 every citizen bore upon his bosom, he could read mueran los 
 salvajes, asquerosos inmundos Urtitarlos (death to the filthy, 
 obscene Unitarians,) emblem imposed by the tyrant upon a 
 subjugated people, through twenty years of assassinations. A 
 brutal soldiery strutted about, in the midst of a civilized society, 
 in the red chiripa* of the savage indian, as their only uniform. 
 In the place of roads, canals of mud led to the city, in which 
 carts of primitive form drawn by half-tamed oxen, often re- 
 mained buried forever. The streets, scarcely lit with tallow 
 candles, were pools of stagnant water, with holes and breaks 
 in the narrow sidewalks. 
 
 I will not extend this picture of a fossil world, but will ex- 
 
 *Waist cloth descending below the knee, used instead of pantaloons.
 
 8 
 
 puncre it by substituting the most important lineaments of the 
 present scene, together with some mention of the principal 
 South American cities Mr. Arnold visited, to show him, that 
 whilst passing rears whitened our heads as individuals, there, 
 as here, society extended its branches, and like the fruit trees, 
 loaded them with golden harvests. Let us begin on the coast 
 of the Pacific. Not far from the port ofCopiapo in Chili, 
 where the English steamers touched in 1848, the port and city 
 ofCaldera was founded in 1852. From its wharf the railway 
 start- which, sealing the Cordilleras of the Andes, brings down 
 from the Chanarsilla and Ises Puntas, the silver ore which 
 increases the commerce of the world. One day's sail to the 
 south will bring him to the port of Coquimbo, and another 
 railway, to Serena. On the announcement of the blockade of 
 these two ports undertaken by the Spaniards, copper doubled 
 in price in England. 
 
 Another day's sail again to the south brings us to Valparaiso, 
 in its commerce a European city, but American in its activity, 
 its citv railways, and its railroad to Santiago. This is a work 
 of American genius, located by the distinguished engineer 
 Allan Campbell, of New- York, who found pleasure in playing 
 with the difficulties invincible to others, of scaling the western 
 chain of mountains parallel to the central Andes. Santiago, 
 which Mr. Arnold knew with all the features of a colonial city, 
 ie to-day called the city of palaces, and among them even the 
 Moorish Alhambra has been copied in miniature. 
 
 Crossing the solemn Andes, a doleful scene would surprise 
 Mr. Arnold, on his second voyage. The city of Mendoza, of 
 which he retains such agreeable reminiscences, ceased to exist 
 a few years ago. It died a violent death, swept away to its 
 foundation by the most horrible earthquake. I recommend 
 him to preserve the remembrance of the city, as he saw it, 
 because this image is the only monument which remains of its 
 appearance. 
 
 Leaving the province of San Juan, my birth-place, distant to 
 the North forty leagues, from Mendoza, with its city somewhat 
 embellished by its " School Sarmiento," the largest and most 
 monumental of all South America: with it.- silver mines,
 
 9 
 
 worked by English capital, the very existence of which was 
 unknown in 1848 ; let us follow the road which, by Sauce's 
 stage coaches, conducts us, in eight days, to the shores of the 
 Parana River. Over the Desaguadero there is now a fine 
 bridge, which then was wanting. The Pampa thence to the 
 Rio Quarto has not sensibly changed its aspect, and I leave its 
 description to Mr. Arnold ; but from thence onward, he would 
 meet with the Civil Engineer, Mr. Henry Blyth, his compat- 
 riot, who, from the track of the Railway to Cordoba, which he 
 is laying at the rate of one mile per week, will show him the 
 tent of Mr. Wheelwright, from whence, with map and com- 
 pass, he is tracing the prolongation of another one hundred 
 leagues of railroad, even to the torrid Tucuman ; that he may 
 shadow himself beneath the matted branches of its orange for- 
 ests, its jasmines, its cedars and Paradise trees. But now we 
 have arrived at Rosario, which, in the diary of Mr. Arnold, 
 only seventeen years ago, figures as an obscure little village of 
 ranchos and huts. But Rosario is now a port and most beauti- 
 ful city, the starting point of the Argentine Central Railroad, 
 and the emporium of the products of all the Provinces, and it 
 possesses journals in Spanish and English, as well as all other 
 signs of commercial activity. 
 
 In place of buying a coach to cross the Pampa to Buenos 
 Ayres, a steamboat awaits him at Hopkins' Wharf, and, de- 
 scending the tranquil waters of the Parana, between leagues 
 long of peach trees, he would arrive at San Fernando, almost 
 brushing by the Islands he left as wild habitations of the tiger ; 
 but, to-day, covered with delightful gardens, forming, with 
 their numerous canals, a rural Holland, productive of vegeta- 
 bles, delicious fruits and trees for fuel. 
 
 The railroad, designed by his friend Hopkins, would carry 
 him from San Fernando to Belgrano, a city born between night 
 and morning, thence through Palermo de San Benito, the for- 
 mer residence of the b rbarous tyrant Rosas, now converted 
 into a school of arts and sciences, to Buenos Ayres, a city of 
 at least 150,000 inhabitants. This city increases at the rate of 
 one thousand houses per annum, and its gas illuminated streets 
 contain the sumptuous Hotels de la Paz, the Club of Progress, 
 2
 
 10 
 
 of the Plata, the Capitol, the Exchange, the Colon Theatre, 
 the cupolas of ten new Temples, five of them Protestant, and 
 an active people, half European, promenading streets well 
 paved in front of stores and shops of all kinds, which expose 
 for sale the industrial riches of the whole world. 
 
 Should he wish to visit the country districts, the railroads to 
 Ensenada, the Southern, the Western or the Northern, are 
 ready for his service at all hours. ' San Jose de Flores, whose 
 beautiful temple Mr. Arnold remembers, is already a suburb 
 of Buenos Ayres, and shortly, it will be a ward and parish of 
 the great city. The school house of this town is more sump- 
 tuous even than the church. Seeing that, in this direction, we 
 are on the road to Lujan, I will tell him that what was then a 
 simple guard-post is now the noble city of Mercedes, surroun- 
 ded by beautiful plantations, whose Club-House, opened when 
 the Western Railway arrived at its doors, cost 100,000 dollars. 
 Farther on in the pampa, where the savages yet made their 
 incursions in 1848, the district of Chivilcoy is found, with its 
 forty square leagues of wheat fields, divided by streets into lots 
 of two leagues each; and in the centre of this agricultural 
 region, peopled by emigrants and cultivated by American 
 ploughs and other implements, the beautiful village of ChiVil- 
 coy rears its ostentatious edifices, fronting avenues like those 
 of New York ; with its park like that of New Haven ; with its 
 schools like those of Providence ; and, as the Rev. Erastus 
 Otis Haven said, in his lecture upon "the adornment of the 
 school houses, as a desideratum among the indirect benefits of 
 Kducation, so as to form a national taste by the production of 
 the fine arts," Chivilcoy is the only town of the world, which, 
 to the glorification of its common schools, has charged a sculp- 
 tor To chisel a group for it. And that group represents the 
 Bublime scene from the Evangelists, where the Saviour says to 
 his Apostles, while blessing some children: " Suffer little chil- 
 dren, and forbid them not, to come unto me." 
 
 Tin-, my Colleagues, is the Buenos Ayres which we, of the 
 liberal Constitutional Union Party of the Argentine Republic, 
 have made in ten years, alter having, in twenty years of hard 
 battling, torn out the indigenous plant of the tyranny of Rosas.
 
 11 
 
 A part of this, the genius, the capital, and the progressive 
 spirit of Rhode Island have done, and all of you ought to con- 
 gratulate yourselves for it. 
 
 If you remark that I note in each country village, or in the 
 Capital, or in some of the Provinces, the existence of fine 
 school houses, I beg my friend, Mr. Arnold, to remember, that 
 it is hardly three weeks since I asked him to accompany me to 
 the Northern Cemetery of Providence, and there, after wander- 
 ing about its shady streets and roads, ascending its elevations, 
 or going down to the little valleys, which so vary this smiling 
 mansion of the dead, on perceiving two funeral columns, " it is 
 the second," I said, and dismounting from the carriage, we reli- 
 giously drew near to the tomb of Horace Mann. I had recog- 
 nized its obelisk, because I knew it was copied from that of the 
 Vatican, the form of which I remembered. This is yet another 
 bond between Rhode Island and my country. Those schools 
 which beautify the pampa of Buenos Ayres, are the effect of 
 the inspiration of that guest of the Northern Cemetery, wh o 
 reposes by the side of your parents and children. " The school 
 building is the school itself, almost the whole school." This 
 was the axiom which I learnt from the experience of Horace 
 Mann, during our colloquies at West Point, in 1847 ; for it is 
 proper you should know that at the very time Mr. Arnold was 
 visitino- my country, by his capital and his friends, at some 
 future day, to communicate to it a spirit of progress, I was 
 visiting the land of his birth, to carry away from it a little of 
 that sacred fire which gives life to the flame of liberty — the 
 universal education of the people. I have, therefore, one friend 
 more in Rhode Island, — Horace Mann ; one bond besides the 
 Historical Society, — the Common Schools. 
 
 I will not stop to mention our interior lines of steamers, save 
 to say that at the request of my friend Hopkins, the Argentine 
 Congress passed a law, last August, subsidizing with $20,000 
 per annum the United States and Brazil line, so soon as it will 
 extend beyond Rio de Janeiro to the port of Buenos Ayres. 
 This bill passed in the lower house unanimously, and is justly 
 considered as an invitation which your Congress will hardly 
 ne fleet. Nor will I mention our newspapers and reviews and
 
 12 
 
 other evidences of our advancement, since the dark day of 
 tyranny — which yet stains our national reputation abroad — 
 passed away from us forever. Your mariners can recount you 
 all this and much more. But I can tell you that if some day our 
 ports should be blockaded, as Spain is now doing with those of 
 Chili, you may be prepared to close half your cloth manufac- 
 tories, because the increase of wool in the Argentine Republic 
 during only the last ten years, is but little less than the pro- 
 duction of Australia. In four years more it will exceed that 
 and the product of the Cape of Good Hope united ; and at the 
 rate of our increase, in ten more, as when the United States 
 ceased to provide cotton, the world will tremble with cold 
 during winter, if our sheep pelts should be wanting. This is 
 to show to political Eip Van Winkles, that they have a great 
 and personal interest in permitting the full development of 
 America ; because every government ought to feel to-day what 
 the freedman Terence felt some two thousand years agone. 
 " Homo su?n et nihil Kumanum a me alienum puto." — Nothing 
 human is indifferent to the modern world. 
 
 This causes me to look up from the facts I have partially 
 related, to the principle which ought to govern them. I said 
 before, that there are no effects without causes. Why is 
 Rhode-Island present in the Rio de la Plata? Why am I here? 
 I ask for all your favor, for Ave ought to leave the field of geo- 
 graphy and material progress, to ascend the higher regions of 
 philosophy and history, which it is the object of our society to 
 study : and although we have been detained by considering 
 whence the influence of North America upon South America 
 has emanated, I would desire, on meeting with you for the first 
 time — and counting upon your indulgence — to show how I 
 explain these influences, how they must work harmoniously 
 in a greater decree, and also what is the best channel in which 
 they should be directed.
 
 13 
 
 II. 
 
 Except Rome, which, from its foundation upon the seven 
 hills, was conscious of its future destiny, the peoples predes- 
 tined to influence the institutions and the march of the human 
 race have not understood themselves in their first manifesta- 
 tions. For them, as for the individual, the nosce seipsum of 
 the ancient sage has been slow and difficult. A foreign eye 
 sometimes succeeds in comprehending them better, and in this 
 view Anacharsis is not wholly an invention of Barthelemy. 
 The aesthetic observer, without the aid of any artificial lens, 
 exercises his vision over the whole, independent of the move- 
 ments of the object observed. Thus, the first page of Greek 
 civilization in its native purity comes before his eye ; and thus 
 I am excused for venturing a few remarks. 
 
 So long a time transpires before enterprising nations feel 
 themselves to be artificers of the work which others see them 
 executing from the beginning, because those permanent asso- 
 ciations which connect us with the past, instinctively direct 
 our looks behind us instead of along the route marked out for 
 us to follow. The chosen people of God every moment fall 
 into that idolatry which it was their mission to dissipate in the 
 future : the Greeks assemble to avenge upon Asiatic Troy the 
 injuries done to their ancestors ; and centuries later Alexander 
 with all the Hellenic civilization, countermarches to the east to 
 ruin it, and to die himself, instead of following on westward 
 to Latium where his vanguard was. He would then have 
 surprised the sons of the Etruscan she-wolf and have softened 
 their natures with the arts of Phidias and the science of Aristotle. 
 If it had not been for this ambitious display of the son of Philip, 
 our women might now be modeled like the Venus de Medici ; 
 the civilized world might have spoken the idiom of Demosthenes, 
 and the barbarians might not, for twelve centuries, have dis- 
 turbed and retarded the march of civilization, paralyzed the 
 fine arts, and delayed the triumph of the democratic republic. 
 
 France in 1790, yielding to this fatal propensity of the hu-
 
 14 
 
 man mind, looked back into history to seek in Greece and 
 Kome the liberty and the republic which Lafayette could teach 
 her, and which he carried to her with the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence and Constitution of the United States. Truth, which, 
 always rich in actual facts, and the only caryatide which sus- 
 tains the entablature, or carries authority with it, appears to 
 lie ignorant of its own force or the light with which it illumi- 
 nates others. Will the United States escape this historic 
 fatality? 
 
 Let us look at the Monroe doctrine with which the atmos- 
 phere seems to be impregnated, rather like a dark cloud than 
 u bright light. Some hope to see rays emitted from its bosom ; 
 others hope to see it resolved into a fixed and resplendent 
 aurora borealis, into that northern light which Webster pointed 
 out, destined to guide the magi of the south to the cradle of 
 American liberty. It is rather a cause of perturbation to the 
 world. 
 
 Yet the Monroe doctrine has its example in history, and its 
 prepared place in the law of nations. Christianity has its 
 Monroe doctrine, accepted by Islam, and the western powers. 
 France has for centuries exercised the moral protectorate of the 
 holy sepulchre, and intervenes with the consent-of Europe in 
 favor of the Christians in the East, on condition of not putting 
 a profane hand upon the sacred deposit, for her own benefit. 
 
 A nation like the United States, which, in less than a cen- 
 turv, has established the Republic as a stable form of govern- 
 ment, upon a virgin soil, freed geographically and politically 
 from the roll of the traditional governments of the rest of the 
 world, has a right to guard the environs of the Holy Cradle of 
 the new world, and to protect these Christians of the West, 
 who, also freed from every letter, are attempting the organiza- 
 tion of Republics. South America assails no European or 
 dynastic right upon her soil, but there is European aggression 
 intent upon rccolonizing it with a principle of government 
 which its first settlers did not import. South America is too 
 low down in the human current for any one to be able to pre- 
 tend thai she has disturbed the waters of the dynastic govern- 
 ment -.
 
 15 
 
 The Monroe doctrine was, in its origin, the protest of Eng- 
 land and the United States against all European intervention 
 which might have, for its object, as the Holy Alliance pro- 
 posed, the proscription of the principles of free government in 
 South America, even as they had been proscribed in Europe 
 since 1815. 
 
 All Europe assented to it by recognizing the Independence 
 of these Republics, and maintains it in the diplomatic protesta- 
 tions which she makes before or after hostile acts, that she has 
 no design against the independence of any of their States. The 
 Monroe doctrine, not only secured the Independence of the 
 Colonies, which were independent, per se, but also the right to 
 emancipate themselves, which the United States had pro- 
 claimed in its Declaration. It did not compromise English 
 Sovereignty, because it came into the world in agreement with 
 England, and by the initiation of Mr. Canning. 
 
 The United States, on pi*esenting itself on the scene of the 
 modern world, put on trial a constitution without precedent in 
 the history of governments ; and the very men who launched 
 this ship, constructed upon no tried models, feared every 
 moment to see it dash itself to pieces upon unknown sands. 
 The ship traversed the seas impelled by propitious airs ; a 
 prophecy of the age of steam applied to human development. 
 The event was due precisely to the plan of the structure, which 
 was founded on the simple notion of justice. But the subse- 
 quent introduction of an old material, heretofore repudiated, 
 which is the conquest and absorption of peoples and territories 
 by arms, was to turn back to two thousand years ago, and 
 utterly to renounce the initiation of the new reconstruction of 
 human society. It was rechanging Americans into Europeans 
 and Asiatics, as General Bonaparte descended from the height 
 of the Egyptian Pyramid, where the future contemplated him, 
 to disguise himself in the polluted and discolored purple, of 
 Marcus Antonius, which the simoom of revolution brought 
 rolling at his feet. 
 
 What an eclipse of history by clouds of dust. 
 
 The federal system is the most admirable combination which 
 chance ever suggested to the genius of man.
 
 16 
 
 Greece would have saved herself, if she had seen it, for she 
 held it before her eyes, and in her hands, in her Achaean and 
 Amphictyonic Leagues. Rome would have saved herself, if she 
 had conceded to the allied Italiots, the equality which they 
 claimed. France would have saved herself, if in republicaniz- 
 ing the works of Louis XI, Richelieu, Mazarin and Louis 
 XIV, she had not effaced from . the map, Guienne, Brittany, 
 Languedoc, Artois, Picardy, &c, and cheated and ground 
 them to powder, as departments, making their territories like 
 a checker-board, in order to deliver them to the Faubourg 
 Saint Antoine, or to some lucky general in the game of politcal 
 chess. But it is dangerous to convert the Federal System into 
 an -invading republic, swallowing ever, without being able to 
 digest. The experiment has never succeeded. Even England 
 saved herself only when she prepared her colonies to emanci- 
 pate themselves, thus giving to the world the legacy of her 
 five institutions, unfettered by her own domination, and crea- 
 ting a New England, without imposing upon it her fatal des- 
 tiny. The republic, crowned with laurels and displaying 
 trophies, is the death of the inebriated inhaler of oxygen, 
 which fills the mind with glorious illusions, whilst the body 
 dies in ineffable convulsions of joy. The Monroe doctrine must 
 be purified of all the stains with which the hand of man has 
 dimmed its lustre. 
 
 The Republic of Chili put at the head of its constitution 
 this declaration : " Chili is the country comprised between the 
 Andes and the Pacific; between Cape Horn and the desert of 
 Atacama." The United States ought to say that it is the 
 country which lies between the two oceans and two treaties, 
 and the day after it has said so, the Monroe doctrine will be 
 accepted by the international law of Europe, thus removing the 
 greatest source of present peril.
 
 17 
 
 III. 
 
 The government of society is like the rnorale of the individ- 
 ual ; of divine origin, and every ray of light which is emitted 
 by this fire will illuminate all around it and spread over the 
 whole earth and into the depths of futurity, as far as the inten- 
 sity and brilliancy will permit. Under despotism it will be 
 the moon whose faint light displays the dark objects on its 
 surface, be they caused by slavery or ignorance. But it will 
 be the resplendent sun whenever the strong currents of true 
 liberty shall vivify its flame. 
 
 Who would have feared that the United States was only to 
 throw shadows round about it ? slavery toward the south, 
 conquest on the west, threats to the north, and a challenge to 
 the world, even like France, which at one time sounded the 
 Marseillaise on the balconies of all Europe, in order to give to 
 it a new and still greater Louis XIV. 
 
 Fortunately, the American Kepublic, retracing its steps, has 
 undertaken to purify its wheat from the tares which bad prin- 
 ciples had introduced from the old world. 
 
 It is not for us to point out the path which the modern repub- 
 lic must take if she will not be misled by the fatuous fires which 
 have ruined so many others. But we may be permitted to ex- 
 amine the language, the history and the progress of South 
 America, in its connection with America of the north, and 
 perhaps we can point out half effaced traces, and some that are 
 imperishable, which reveal the transit of the pioneer exploring 
 the country and opening the way for future movements. 
 
 The United States, from afar, hurried on the independence of 
 South America. The Anglo- American colonies on declarino- 
 themselves independent, established certain truths as self-evi- 
 dent, which had not been so to all the peoples of the world, until 
 the dawn of this happy experiment in the Constitution of the 
 United States, but which were proclaimed in the name of hu- 
 manity as Lincoln expounded it in his immortal interpretation 
 3
 
 18 
 
 of the Declaration, in Independence Hall. Yet there are others 
 which apply to peoples placed in certain circumstances with 
 relation to others. " When in the course of human events," 
 it says, " it is necesary for a people to break the bonds which 
 have bound them to another." <Sbc. 
 
 This was the proclamation of the right of colonics to eman- 
 cipate themselves wheresoever the laws of nature hold sway, 
 and the nature of God is comprehended by the human con- 
 science. South America felt itself evoked by this herald, and 
 in San Martin and in Bolivar, found Washingtons and Lafay- 
 ette's wlui secure.^ by the sanction of victory, the independence 
 which its Congress declared ; and like the North Americans 
 .-lie took her scat in the family of nations. 
 
 Her recognition was not obtained without conquering de- 
 termined opposition. When the new republics were ushered 
 into existence. Napoleon, the prodigal son of the republic, had 
 just been finally conquered. The Bourbons had been restored 
 as the safe representatives of the divine right to govern, and 
 the holy alliance made itself a political inquisition to burn all 
 constitutions which invoked the will of the people. 
 
 England and the United States, forgetting past dissentions, 
 agreed this time that they alone were left in the world to pre- 
 serve English liberties exposed to isolation and proscription : 
 the one dependent upon the popular origin of its kings, sus- 
 taining the principles of the declaration of independence, the 
 other asking and obtaining justice for the emancipated colonies, 
 declaring them their equals. The Monroe doctrine, which was 
 I ii. in then, had a more elevated origin than a proper name, and 
 like the metrical decimal systems, it is founded in the laws of 
 nature and in the nature of God, and is in so far not French, 
 but human. 
 
 What the cabinet of Washington did then was to send a 
 diplomatic mission to the Bio de la Plata in the frigate ( longress, 
 in order to examine into the condition and probabilities of the 
 war of the colonies against Spain. It wished to survey the 
 land in order to proceed to the recognition according to the 
 capacity of the colonies to triumph definitely. 
 
 The result of this exploring commission was published in
 
 19 
 
 1819, in Baltimore, in two volumes, and was reprinted in Lon- 
 don in 1820, and dedicated by the secretary of the commission, 
 Mr. H. M. Breckinridge, to Sir James Macintosh, as to one 
 " who comprehended fully the future destinies of both Americas, 
 North and South," so that thus the two cabinets marched in 
 accord, and thus the two continents were united in sympathy 
 and opinion. 
 
 This work, by its official character and origin, and by the 
 documents which accompanied it, diffused much interest in 
 favor of South America, both in England and in the United 
 States. Accompanying the work of the secretary was the 
 report of Mr. Rodney, chief of the expedition, dedicated to Mr. 
 John Quincy Adams, then Secretary of State. Mr. Graham, 
 another of the commissioners, gave a separate report — a com- 
 plement to that of Mr. Rodney — which went to confirm both. 
 The work terminates with a letter dedicated to James Monroe, 
 by an American citizen, pleading warmly for the independence of 
 the Spanish colonies, and thus preparing public opinion for the 
 recognition. The conclusion to which this writer arrived, after 
 having sustained the right and the justice of the colonies to 
 emancipate themselves, was this : u It is very evident that ive 
 must be, and should be proud, to be, the first to acknowledge the 
 independence of South America, or one 'part of it, ivhenever it 
 be achieved, now or ten years hence.'' Mr. Breckenridge's book, 
 the official reports and the letter to Monroe, breathe the same 
 interest for the cause of South America ; the same approbation 
 of its motives ; the same confidence in the results. Prominent 
 in them is a profound sympathy for the people who inhabit the 
 margins of the Rio de la Plata, explaining their situation, and 
 submitting animated notices upon their resources, commerce 
 and present civilization, and hopes of development, with such 
 a faithful relation of the antecedents which produced them, that 
 later Argentine historians* have recurred to these fountains as 
 to a daguerreotype of their juvenile condition, in order to verify 
 the historic facts comprised in that epoch. 
 
 The public of the United States knew at that time, through 
 
 * Historia Argentina, by Domtnguer.
 
 20 
 
 this voyage of their commissioners, the geographical and chron- 
 ological contemporaneous history of those countries, watered by 
 the Rio de la Plata, and was then interested in their indepen- 
 dence, which was sunn recognized by the United States. Since 
 that act and the book of Breckinridge, no work has been pub- 
 li-hed in the United States, of such intelligent and appreciative 
 sympathy with the republics of South America, whose inde- 
 pendence was secured by Generals and battles which yield, in 
 important results, to nothing which history relates. 
 
 In 1826, in the discussion upon the Panama mission in Con- 
 gress, Webster was heard to utter these feeling words from his 
 lofty seal in that body, against the indifference which already 
 began to insinuate itself into all minds. 
 
 "Sir, what is mearil by this? Is it intended that the people of the 
 United Slate- oughl lobe totally indifferent to the fortunes of these 
 new neighbors? Is no change in the light in which we are to view 
 them to he wrought by their having thrown off foreign dominion, estab- 
 lished independi nee, and instituted on our very borders republican 
 rrovernments essentially after our own example? Sir, I do not wish to 
 overrate,! do not overrate the progress of these new states in the 
 great work of establishing a well secured popular liberty. I know that 
 in be a great attainment, and I know they arc lait pupils in the school. 
 But, thank God, they are in the school. They aie called to meet diffi- 
 culties such as neither we nor our lathers encountered. For these we 
 oughl to make large allowances. What have we ever known like the 
 colonial vassalage of these States? When did we or our ancestors 
 feel, like them, the weight of a political despotism that presses man to 
 the earth, or that religious intolerance which would shut up heaven to 
 all of a different creed? Sir, we sprung from another stock. We belong 
 to another race. We have known nothing, we have felt nothing of 
 the political despotism of Spain, nor of the heat of her fires of intole- 
 rance. No rational man expects that the South can run the same 
 rapid careei as the North, or that an insurgent province of Spain is in 
 the same condition as the English colonies when they first asserted 
 their independence. There is, doubtless, much more to be done in the 
 first than in the last case. But on that account the honor of the attempt 
 i- not less, and if all difficulties shall be in time surmounted, it will be 
 greater. The work may be more arduous; it is not less noble, because 
 there may be more of ignorance to enlighten, more of bigotry to sub-
 
 21 
 
 due, more of prejudice to eradicate. If it be a weakness to feel a 
 strong interest in the success of these great revolutions, I confess myself 
 guilty of that weakness. If it be weak to feel that I am an American, 
 to think that recent events have not only opened new modes of inter- 
 course, but have created also new grounds of regard and sympathy 
 between ourselves and our neighbors ; if it be weak to feel that the 
 South, in her present state, is somewhat more emphatically a part of 
 America than when she lay obscure, oppressed and unknown, under 
 the grinding bondage of a foreign power ; il it be weak to rejoice when, 
 even in. any corner of the earth human beings are able to rise from 
 beneath oppression, to erect themselves, and to enjoy the proper happi- 
 ness of their intelligent nature, — if this be weak, it is a weakness from 
 which I claim no exemption." 
 
 The history of the United States shows that Webster was 
 the last statesman who felt that weakness. 
 
 Who has read an American book? asked the English histo- 
 rian. Washington Irving replies by writing the Life and 
 Voyages of Christopher Columbus, and England and the world 
 read a book of North American birth but of South American 
 and Spanish descent. 
 
 Ferdinand and Isabella, monarchs of Aragon and Castile, 
 Columbus and the discovery of Hispaniola are the first page 
 of the history of North America, and every time the North 
 American mind has to recur to its origin, it must return to 
 the Spain of Charles V. and Philip II.; and there meet the histo- 
 rian of another language, of another nation, and of other colo- 
 nies. Washington Irving, in following Columbus, pointed the 
 way to Spanish and South American chroniclers and historians, 
 and to the dusty documents hoarded in the archives of Simancas, 
 for the guidance of the whole school of North American Spanish 
 historians who followed in his footsteps. Prescott first penetra- 
 ted the Spanish conquests in Mexico and Peru, in the reigns of 
 the Catholic monarchs and of Philip II., in order better to 
 explain the historic meaning of the events he narrates ; as 
 Le Verriei* remade and rectified all existing astronomical cal- 
 culations, before commencing the search for his planet. 
 
 Prescott is a South American historian, and in the history 
 of the colonies shows himself fully at home. Prescott is also
 
 22 
 
 a Spanish historian by his profound erudition, and by that 
 moral indifference which Webster saw in the future, and im- 
 pugned in reference to the consequences of the errors and per- 
 versities of Spanish colonization in South America, It is the 
 rule of the plastic art of historical composition, that the historian 
 shall show himself to be impartial, and shall transport himself 
 in imagination again to live over the life, the pre-occupations, 
 and the ideas of the times which he describes. But there is 
 great danger of touching the extreme, of losing, 'by too great 
 an effort for impartiality, all consciousness of good and evil, 
 making himself an accomplice of the vices of his heroes. I 
 have wished to discover in what country and in what age the 
 works of Prescott upon Spanish colonization in South America 
 were written, and sometimes it has seemed to mc that it must 
 have been in Spain, in the midst of the eighteenth century. 
 
 Quite another thing is Motley in his Rise of the Dutch Re- 
 public, another arm of Spanish domination which went to the 
 pools of Holland to stifle in its cradle — the native country of 
 the degenerate Philip II. — the germs of modern liberty. Motley 
 i- North American in body and soul. An impartial historian, 
 he exercises the historical power of doing justice, calling to his 
 tribunal the illustrious criminals who have no other judge on 
 earth but the historian, who, after having listened to the wit- 
 nesses and exhumed the corpses to verify the wounds, or the 
 presence of poison, delivers them up, with his sentence, to the 
 execration of future ages. Motley, without failing in his im- 
 partiality, fought by the side of William the silent, interpreted 
 hi- taciturnity, and executed his orders. The history of the 
 wars of Flanders, is the beginning of North American history, 
 for there those principles of government were tried which have 
 been developed in the United States. It is also the beginning 
 of the history of South America, because the Spanish captains 
 who from there passed to South America, learned to harden 
 themselves to crime and to the violation of divine laws, in the 
 name of a (rod served by pillage and extermination. Motley's 
 history has not yet been translated into Castilian, because the 
 malefactors in it have kindred and friends who feel themselves
 
 23 
 
 to be ensanbenitadas* in that auto dafe celebrated in expiation 
 for the ills done to human liberty and conscience. Would that 
 the courageous and generous Motley may go to South America, 
 to scourge with his historical lash, all that remains of the work 
 of Philip II. which Prescott left in unmolested and tranquil 
 possession of the soil. 
 
 North American historic art having referred to the original 
 sources of the history of South America, it was necessary to 
 penetrate farther into Spanish literature and fine arts, and 
 Ticknor, of Boston, wrote a complete History of Sp anish Lite- 
 rature, by the aid of five thousand volumes written in that 
 language, as the English studied the Sanscrit, forgotten by 
 India, in the Vedas and Paranas. Strange to say, the printing- 
 offices of the Spanish language are in Paris, Brussels and New 
 York. The best speaker of the Castilian language, — Andres 
 Bel o, a Venetian resident in Chili, — has never been in Spain, 
 yet he has been made a member of the Royal Academy of 
 Madrid, which like the Tribunal of Kites, in China, has the 
 function, in the name of an inert and congealed civilization, of 
 rejecting all those words, which, with the objects and the ideas 
 of modern progress, ask to be nationalized. In New-England, 
 Mr. Ticknor, the most learned living litterateur of the Spanish 
 language, — which is treated by foreigners as a classic but dead 
 language, — cannot speak it any more than he can speak Greek 
 or Latin. 
 
 Spain is a subject worthy of study in its artistic manifesta- 
 tions, which, notwithstanding some collateral influences, are 
 its own, without the inheritance of ancient art which was not 
 revived for it as for the rest of Europe, with the fall of Constan- 
 tinople. To this day, in the Peninsula, and in Spanish Amer- 
 ica, Sophocles and Homer are not used for Greek readings in 
 their universities. Velasquez, Murillo, Surbaran, are not, — 
 like Michael Angelo and Raphael, — disciples of Phidias and 
 Praxiteles. The model of Velasquez is the shepherd of old 
 Castilla, elevated to the rank of Patriarch ; the virgin of 
 
 * The Sanbenito is a gown marked with a yellow cross behind and before, 
 and worn by penitent convicts of the Inquisition.
 
 24 
 
 Murillo is the Andalusian of undulating outlines as the curvi- 
 linear beauty of the human ideal requires. Calderon de la 
 Barca invented a dramatic art from top to toe, and carried it to 
 greater perfection than that mysterious people did their statu- 
 ary, who have left their monuments in Nicaragua. His merit 
 does DOt puss beyond these, however; although it is so great 
 that humanity owes him an accessit. It is a prodigy to create 
 an art without the aid of human tradition, but such attempts 
 cannot serve for models, and after being admired, they pass into 
 museums of curiosities. 
 
 In Spanish literature, Mr. Ticknor must have stumbled upon 
 that great aerolite which fell from heaven upon the soil of la 
 Mancha, (Don Quixote) and have halted to contemplate it 
 with the same admiration and stupor as all the literati of the 
 world have done. Human genius is independent of the influ- 
 ences of race and atmosphere. Cervantes found the foreign 
 legend of Amadis de Gaul and the profession of knight errantry 
 motcd in Spain, and undertook by strokes of genius to expel 
 the worthless idlers who were perverting the common sense of 
 tin' nation. But that evil weed of the middle ages being; extir- 
 pated, nothing grew in its place, the inquisition taking good 
 care to root out every new plant germinated by the winds 
 which agitated modern Europe. 
 
 Cervantes knew little of the history of Spain, and what 
 Ticknor points out as his carelessness proves it in numerous 
 and essential particulars. For this reason he belongs to no 
 nation. He is the exalted glorification of the human race and 
 all nations claim him. By his stepping upon the earth he cre- 
 ated a language : for the angels of heaven perfect all that they 
 t >uch. This idiom has been called the idiom of Cervantes, 
 and it has been embalmed in honor of him. 
 
 From the time that their country ceased to be English, in 
 order to he AMERICA in the history and progress of the human 
 race, another current of their own history was to carry the 
 North Americans to South America. Beyond the frontiers 
 and the present, are the monuments of a civilization which has 
 had its dark age bul not its renaissance. America has her 
 petrified cities, the abode of a great people who flourished in
 
 25 
 
 them, pyramids which rival those of Egypt, temples and pala- 
 ces which now fertilize the trunks of trees centuries old. The 
 architecture of Satir reveals a civilization anterior to that of 
 Eo-ypt, yet a branch of the same human family, as is manifested 
 by the pyramidal construction, and by the mummies which are 
 found in Thebes and in Peru, with the same canopo or idol, 
 with the same name and located in the same place. When 
 these monuments, which begin with the mound arid end with 
 enormous masses of hewn stone, sculptured with a thousand 
 hieroglyphics, have been studied, classified and compared, the 
 history of both Americas will begin upon the same page, will 
 be illustrated with the same lights from the time of their origin 
 to that of Columbus. Here it divides into two great chapters, 
 Cabot and Pizarro, who terminate in Washington and San 
 Martin, and then their peculiar institutions and successive de- 
 velopments evolve the common history of the great American 
 family. 
 
 For a long time there has been no hope of critical history 
 applied to the raw materials collected by plastic historians and 
 observing travellers. 
 
 " A new History of the Conquest of Mexico, in which Las 
 Casas' denunciations of the popular historians of that war arc 
 fully vindicated, by Robert Anderson Wilson," has just opened 
 a new epoch in the history of the most ancient world. This 
 historian shows, by a critical examination of the ruins of thirty 
 cities in Central America, that, before the appearance of the 
 Greeks and Romans, India, Phoenicia, Egypt, Yucatan in Cen- 
 tral America, Mexico in the north, and Peru in the south, were 
 leagued together by navigation, religion and the arts ; for the 
 Peruvian ruins do not yield in importance to those of the other 
 countries named, nor in evident indications of the common ori- 
 gin of the Phoenicians, Egyptians, and the ancient American 
 civilizations. " The labor necessary," says Wilson in his work, 
 " for the production of this chapter, has not only carried con- 
 viction to the mind of the author, but has brought together a 
 mass of testimony beyond the reach of doubt — testimony suffi- 
 cient to prove a traditional title in a court of justice — an Egyp- 
 tian title to Central American civilization, and a Phoenician title 
 
 4 "
 
 26 
 
 to the religion that at that early period was dominant on this 
 continent, under the influence of the eastern cdlonies, while it 
 fully explains the necessity the Romanists were under of invent- 
 ing the fabulous mission of the apostle Thomas, to account for 
 the religions emblems which they recognized as belonging to 
 their own superstitions.'" 
 
 That study of ancient arts and monuments has begun in 
 North America : but following the traces of the people who left 
 them in their migrations to the south. Stephens found them 
 approximating to Greek art in the statues of Nicaragua, and 
 Norman relates the same as discovered in the pyramids, palaces 
 and temples of Yucatan, in the solemn ruins of Chiheu, Rabah, 
 Tuzi, and Uxmal, even as the Spanish explorers had found 
 them in great numbers in Palenque, in Cusco, and through 
 all Peru, where there are signal marks of not merely one but 
 various monumental civilizations, anterior to the epoch of the 
 Incas, who found them in ruins. While these labors of anti- 
 quarians are in process of completion, let us follow the steps of 
 other explorers who are examining the territory of the future 
 scene of human movements. 
 
 The exploration of the valley of the Amazon, made under the 
 direction of the Navy Department, by Leivis Herndon ami 
 Lardner Gibbon, published by the House of Representatives 
 of the Congress of the United States, has exposed to the con- 
 templation of the world, that most wonderful estuary of rivers, 
 which, like the veins of the body, give life to the whoie South 
 American continent, for they are connected with the bottom 
 land.- of the Orinoco, and may without a great effort he made 
 to communicate with the Rio de la Plata. Perhaps the Ama- 
 zon is destined to be the means of restoring the countries of the 
 torrid zone to the negro rape, to whom God has adjudicated it, 
 raising up punic nations along the course of that powerful river, 
 by the freedom of Brazil and the United State-. 
 
 L<i Plata, the Argentine Confederation, and Paraguay, 
 being a narrative of the exploration of the tributaries of the 
 rimer La Pluto and adjacent countries, under the orders of the 
 United Stated Government, by Thomas Paige, U. S.N. Com- 
 mandant of the Expedition, is a work of exploration of the
 
 27 
 
 course of the South American rivers, next in size to the Ama- 
 zon, and the continuation in 1865 of the mission of 1817 in the 
 frigate Congress, by the Water Witch. 
 
 The work upon Chili published by Lieutenant Gillis, late 
 superintendent of the Washington Observatory, completes, — 
 although with little judgment in this part, — the North Ameri- 
 can study of the principal points of South America — the work 
 of Mr. Squier upon the ancient monuments of Yucatan and 
 Peru, being still anxiously hoped for. To these may be added, 
 as a scientific complement of those explorations of South 
 America, the astronomical observations of the southern skies, 
 executed by the same Lieutenant Gillis whilst in Chili. These 
 have not yet been published, but will be so under the patronage 
 of the government of the United States. The scientific expe- 
 dition undertaken by the learned Agassiz, and paid for by the 
 citizens of Massachusetts, for the purpose of studying the geol- 
 ogy, botany and mineralogy of Brazil, and the basin of the La 
 Plata, is destined to illustrate with new data, the views which 
 are entertained upon those countries ; and if the idea of the 
 astronomer Gould, of Cambridge is carried out, of erecting an 
 observatory in Cordova, to complete what is wanting to a full 
 catalogue of the stars, the United States will have put the final 
 touch to the work of taking an inventory of that creation, of 
 which our globe forms but a small and humble fraction. 
 
 A more influential part in the material progress of South 
 America is due to those who have extended to it the benefits 
 of rapid locomotion, which has come to remedy so many evils 
 of bad Spanish colonization. Panama, the central point of 
 Spain in her occupation and conquest of the coasts of the 
 Pacific, was at one time the official and inevitable route of 
 commerce, until contraband trade opened a new route to Peru, 
 by the Rio de la Plata and Chili. The revolution for Indepen- 
 dence set free Cape Horn, and after its terrors were dissipated, 
 Panama fell to ruin like Palmyra of the desert, when the com- 
 merce of the east abandoned the route of the Persian Gulf. 
 
 The Xorth American Stephens undertook to connect the two 
 oceans by the Panama railroad, — a dangerous work which only 
 the American go-a-head-ism could attempt, calculating before-
 
 28 
 
 band, — like the general who wishes to take possession of a 
 strategic position, — the number of victims he would have to 
 sacrifice to the infernal sods. Panama lias again become the 
 centre of the commerce of both seas, and will be so of the east 
 and of the west, with the archipelagoes of the intermediary 
 mie world. 
 
 Thus the history of the Spanish colonies and the literature of 
 their language, the monuments and vestiges of other ages which 
 cover their soil; the exploration of the great rivers and their 
 tributaries : the geology and nature of the lands which bathe 
 them : the modes of terrestrial communication to accelerate 
 motion, and the constellations of the southern sky, have for half 
 a century excited the activity of the North Americans, as if 
 those items were an integral part of their own history, geogra- 
 phv and sky, and that world a natural prolongation of their 
 own. a vast field for their activity and industry ; the nature of 
 things, rather than a recognized homogeneity, drawing them on 
 t<> extend their action over those countries, and to advance 
 human knowledge in those badly explored regions. Are there 
 nol in this movement instinctive laws which direct and impel 
 them, as water finds its level? 
 
 The actual political world presents many of the features of 
 those initial epochs in which spontaneous societies attempted 
 systems and principles of government according as historical 
 or geographical accidents determined their internal develop- 
 ment, combatting among themselves for external dominion, till 
 weak organizations succumbing, — as Darwin supposes in the 
 natural -election of the species, — a current was set in motion, 
 which drew into it other tendencies imposing itself for c«nturies 
 upon humanity. The Egyptians with their sacerdotal castes ; 
 the Persians with their Dariuses; the Spartans with their laws 
 ofLycurgus; the Athenian- with their fine arts; the Phoenic- 
 ians and Carthaginians with their commerce and colonies ; the 
 Romans with their legions and their legislation, each one for 
 hi- own. comes struggling and contending to establish himself 
 ;t- model and universal ruler, until the Greeks eliminate the 
 Persians and Egyptians; the Romans the Greeks and Cartha- 
 ginians : and Rome :it last makes herself the current which
 
 29 
 
 remoulds the East and the West, absorbing them into her 
 bosom. 
 
 In America, the United States have succeeded by means of an 
 internal social war, in taking a definitive position in the politi- 
 cal world, passing from an attempt at institutions to an initial 
 civilization, armed at all points, and in order to serve as a rule 
 and model, necessarily prepared for one of those general con 
 elusions on which humanity is anxious to repose after each one 
 of its fractions has maintained some separate truth. 
 
 More space and meditation would be necessary than that 
 which an introductory address admits, in order to determine, — 
 the necessities of the epoch being given, — what are the ele- 
 ments which constitute North American civilization. We will 
 indicate those which enter into our purpose — Intellectual apti- 
 tude generalized for the whole nation and for all Generations, 
 by a plan of universal education, so as to appropriate to itself 
 every new progress of human knowledge in all countries. 
 Preparation of the soil determined by railroads, canals, rivers 
 and seas to a rapid movement and circulation ; and all this 
 conjunction of natural and acquired advantages, impelled and 
 governed by a system of political instruction which has the 
 sanction of time, of fruitful and happy experience, and what is 
 more, the moral sanction of the human conscience in all coun- 
 tries, supposing that the right to civil and religious liberty of 
 action and of thought is indeed an unquestionable truth in the 
 conscience of men. 
 
 As may be seen by this address, none of the actual powers 
 of the earth holds in its bosom or in its essence, all, — although 
 each one may have some, — of these elements of present great- 
 ness and of future development. 
 
 On the other side, only England and the United States have 
 fundamental institutions to offer as models to the future world. 
 England because she propagates hers with her commerce, in- 
 dustry and language, to her numerous colonies, not exporting 
 from her own territory her monarchy or her nobility ; the 
 United States because they have fertilized and diffused them 
 upon their own territory which is exempted from the traditions 
 of the past. Aristocratic England may be proud of having
 
 30 
 
 produced the democratic United States, as the patrician Cor- 
 nelia was proud of her Gracchi of the Tribune; but she fails 
 to see whether the modern Gracchi understand better how to 
 direct the popular forces, and saving themselves for themselves, 
 save the world from one of those retrogressions which follow 
 tin.' wanderings of the initiators. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Imagine an immense mass detaching itself from the solar 
 matter, and, obeying Bode's empiric law, taking position be- 
 tween Mars and Jupiter, in the hiatus where a hundred aste- 
 roids are now wandering ! What confusion in the orbits of the 
 solar world ! What oscillations while the equilibrium between 
 the old and the new attracting forces could be established ! 
 And in the interior of the planets, what unseen commotions ; 
 what violent rising of the seas, causing change of their beds, 
 deluges and disorder ! How long before the new, regular, har- 
 monious and equally balanced order could triumph over the 
 universal confusion ! 
 
 Such was the situation of South America at the beginning 
 of our century. The United States detached themselves, at 
 the end of the last century, from the mass of the European 
 world, and took a position among the ancient nations, filling 
 the hiatus which separated the ancient East from the modern 
 West. The commotion was soon felt throughout the whole 
 earth. South America felt herself irresistibly impelled to be- 
 come independent also: she; struggled and battled from one 
 extremity to the other, severed her chains and won her inde- 
 pendence. "And it was the evening and the morning of the 
 first dav." On the following day she had still another task ; 
 to organize a Government. Should they be Kepublics ? The 
 French Republic of L793 had fallen. Should they be Mon-
 
 31 
 
 archies ? One of the kings of Spain was an imbecile, the other 
 was a captive. Should they be Empires ? The great emperor, 
 as a warning, was bound to the rock of St. Helena. The 
 European storm having cleared away in 1819, and the chaos 
 illuminated, the political world appeared in three groups — 
 Continental Europe under the Holy Alliance ; liberal and 
 monarchical England ; the Republican and Federal United 
 States. Which of these types shall South America take as a 
 model ? 
 
 The Liberator Bolivar extends his powerful influence over 
 Venezuela, New Granada, Ecuador, and the newly made Boli- 
 via. Bolivar, according to one of his eulogists, imagined an 
 adaptation of the English government, " free without tumult- 
 uous excesses, strong without the risks of despotism, with pop- 
 ular legislation, a President for life, and between these extremes, 
 a hereditary Senate. 
 
 But between imagining and realizing there is an immensity ! 
 What have not the French imagined, from Sieves, Robespierre, 
 Fourier and Napoleon the Great ! Through all South America, 
 from the depths of society, in spite of the judicious algebraic 
 combinations of statesmen, there arose from the very struggle, 
 from the partial emancipation of the people, the dissolution of 
 the former Vice-Royalties, with the name of federation rather 
 than with its form, the intuition rather than the idea. Such a 
 form of government, said Bolivar, "is a "regular anarchy, or 
 rather the law that prescribes dissatisfaction and ruin to the 
 state. I think it would be better for America to adopt the 
 Koran rather than the government of the United States, not- 
 withstanding it is the best in the world." And yet, the great 
 centralization which he labored for from the Orinoco to the 
 Desaguadero, became dismembered, while the Federal Repub- 
 lic, similar to the United States, was established, or is still 
 struggling to establish itself. 
 
 At the same time, the Liberator of the extreme south of 
 America, General San Martin, whose life and public acts 1 
 have had the honor to offer to your library, said : " I feel sick 
 at heart whenever 1 hear federation spoken of. Can it be real- 
 ized ?" And, nevertheless, he lived to see the intuitive federa-
 
 32 
 
 tion established in his country, in spite of the Congress of 1818, 
 which accepted monarchy; in spite of the Congress of 1826, 
 which constituted the Unitarian Republic. After his death, 
 the very persons who, like himself, felt sick at heart when they 
 heard the word federation, constituted the United Provinces 
 of the River Plata, submitting to the popular vote, and Mexico 
 has struggled for twenty years to be called the United States 
 of Mexico. 
 
 Why this general persistency to adopt a form which had no 
 precedent in their history ? Because the only existing Republic, 
 the United States of America, presented itself in this form, 
 powerful, happy and free: because the people do not accept 
 abstract ideas without the form which practical facts give to 
 them. However fit or unfit those countries may be for a fed- 
 nation, however well or ill prepared for self government, they 
 adopted the republican form of government for the same reason 
 that they struggled for their independence ; and it is the Federal 
 garb which clothes the model Republic, the great Republic, the 
 Republic of our age. 
 
 II ; iv. then, is another influence of the United States on 
 South America; an unconscious, latent, permanent influence, 
 tlu' cause of many changes and revolutions. One half of the 
 disturbances of Mexico, of Colombia, and of the Argentine 
 Republic, which have lasted for half a century, demolishing the 
 colonial svstem, and destroying the imitations of the Roman 
 and the French central Republics, .have been caused by the 
 indirect but powerful influences of the United States. 
 
 As to the direct influences of the great Republic, a single 
 fact will serve to give an idea of them. In 1848 a traveller 
 returned from the United States, where he had obtained an 
 insight into the admirable working of the Federal Constitution 
 of the United States, and, to the surprise of his former co-poli- 
 tician-, he initiated a movement in the press, which spread 
 th< nee to public opinion, to parties, to wars and to institutions. 
 Hi reasoning was simple: "The will of the people, violence 
 and th<' course of events, have; given to the State the federal 
 }•„,.,„. Constitutions are nothing more than the proclamation 
 ofthe rights and obligations of man in society. In this view
 
 33 
 
 all the constitutions of the world might be reduced to a single 
 one. As to the Federal mechanism, we have at present no 
 model except the Constitution of the United States. We are 
 determined to be Federals ; then let us be so after the manner of 
 the only people who have this form of government ! Do we care 
 to invent some other Federal form hitherto unknown in the 
 world ? Take the name of the United States of 
 
 South America, and the sense of human dignity and a noble 
 emulation, will conspire to preserve from reproach that name 
 with which great ideas are associated." In 1859, after ten 
 years of fluctuations in events and ideas, the United Provinces 
 of the River Plata were proclaimed, and Story dethroned 
 Rosas, who was the fruit of the doctrine of free and uncon- 
 trolled will in constitutional matters ; as were also the works 
 of Rousseau, Sieves, Robespierre, Napoleon, and the disasters 
 of the French revolution, which decapitated Louis the XVI. 
 in the name of liberty : thus reviving the times of Julius Caesar, 
 or, in other words, going back two thousand years in the science 
 of government. 
 
 The liberty of conscience, the equality of religions, the gene- 
 ral disarming of religious creeds which, have steeped the earth 
 in blood, from the Arians down to the thirty years war, are 
 North American principles. The world owes the existence of 
 the United States to religious persecution ; to Roger Williams, 
 history owes the treaty of alliance between the persecutors and 
 the persecuted, and the human race its present enjoyment of 
 liberty of conscience. Strauss, Colenso and Renan, unlike Lu- 
 ther, Calvin, Torquemada, and Thomas of Canterbury, can 
 examine the bible anew without plunging the nations into war, 
 and seeing their works committed to the flames, as in the times 
 when men submitted religious truth to the judgment of fire and 
 sword, which they called the judgment of God. 
 
 South America, peopled by religious exterminators, having 
 the law and fanaticism in the laws of the Indies united with the 
 State Inquisition, has struggled heroically to free itself from 
 this element which constitutes part of its very essence, and 
 which clings tenaciously to a dominant church, with immense 
 wealth, with an exclusive, pre-eminent, influential, all powerful
 
 34 
 
 clergy. The liberty of worship has been the point of conten- 
 tion in all Spanish America ; the temporalities of the clergy, 
 the target of the struggle of parties. The ignorant multitudes, 
 superstitious, indifferent as to liberty, to well-being, to nation- 
 ally . wove sensible, only, when the chord of the dominant, ex- 
 clusive, and intolerant religion was struck ; and the United 
 States is now witnessing the lot which fell to Mexico in its 
 efforts to sever the secular chain. Juarez secularized the 
 properties of the church ; and the bishops delivered the country 
 to foreigners. Maximilian, in the name of great principles, 
 jnstilied Juarez, and took possession of the Republic. Is there 
 so much cause to blame the many struggles of South America? 
 Is the soldier who comes out of the battle covered with wounds 
 less glorious than he who comes out of the struggle safe and 
 sound? North America reaped the fruit of the blood which 
 their fathers had shed in England, when the Pilgrims, Lord 
 Baltimore, Penn and Roger Williams, came to its shores. It 
 is but forty years since, in Lima, the people scattered the fire- 
 brands of the Inquisition, and destroyed the instruments of 
 torture. South America is still passing through her thirty 
 veins war, to enter into the conditions of the modern political 
 world ; — bleeding, in order that English and American protes • 
 tants and dissenters may have the right, there, as here, to wor- 
 ship God according to the faith of their lathers. 
 
 The first constitution of the Provinces of the River Plata, 
 said, in 1815: "the Roman Catholic Apostolic religion, is 
 the religion of the State." The second, of 1819, added :" to 
 which the inhabitants shall pay the greatest respect, whatever 
 their opinion may be." 
 
 That of Buenos Ayres, promulgated in 1834, with a State 
 religion, said : " nevertheless, the right which man has to wor- 
 shij, God according to his conscience, is inviolable." The last 
 one, of 1852, suppressing the religion of the State, says : " the 
 FEDERAL GOVERNMENT sustains the Catholic worship.'" It 
 has taken forty years to modify the colonial exclusiveness to 
 the suppression of the State church; but each of these amend- 
 ments ha- cost much disturbance, and many battles. Perhaps 
 man\ others may be required before we can arrive at true 
 \.H ill \ merican principles.
 
 35 
 
 Four years of war, the loss of a million of men, and three 
 thousand millions of debt, it has cost the United States to be 
 the last on earth which has abolished slavery. Their own 
 experience has taught them to be indulgent with those auda- 
 cious and determined South American patriots, who, since 
 1810, undertook at the same time to be independent, give liberty 
 to their slaves as they wished it for themselves, and give them- 
 selves a form of government which, unlike that of the United 
 States, had no precedent in the colonies ; — without being like 
 France, twice discouraged, nor abandoning its fate to the tute- 
 lage of one man ; as neither the influential Bolivar, nor the 
 sanguinary exterminator Rosas, could succeed in vanquishing 
 the indomitable purpose of South America, to learn to be free 
 at its own cost, risk and peril ; for one generation after another 
 offered its blood to irrigate each new principle introduced into 
 the country. So it was that when they had gained one point 
 and had established it, they left it to the care of the women, — 
 and by penance and fastings prepared themselves to conquer 
 another; and a new civil war commenced, and after the battle, 
 the Magna Charta is signed : after another, the bill of rights ; 
 after another, the liberty of worship for foreigners ; because 
 we, the Catholics, have it. Holy Pilgrim Fathers of South 
 America, justice will yet be done to you by the sons of the 
 Plymouth Pilgrim Fathers of Rhode-Island and of Massachu- 
 setts Bay ! 
 
 I will not attempt to conceal the fact that the ignorance of 
 three centuries, the ignorance of the Spaniards of the fifteenth 
 century, perpetuated in a savage land, the abject condition of 
 the rude Indian incorporated into colonial society, fanaticism 
 and the loosening of every moral bond, have produced in South 
 America greater depravity than slavery in the south, here. 
 There is no company of apostles without a Judas, without a 
 Peter, who denies his master thrice. You have seen by the 
 impartial historian, Macauley, how it was in the most corrupt 
 times and by the most depraved men of England, that English 
 liberty was definitely constituted. 
 
 What we ask for South America is not indulgence, but jus- 
 tice. We ask merely for the time needed for each cause to
 
 36 
 
 produce its effect. Let us compare South America with your 
 country. The United Slates occupied ten years in the war of 
 Independence, and tour years in the war against slavery. We 
 
 2jht tor both causes at the same time, and won them both 
 in fifteen wars. So far we are equals. But you have not had 
 to wage war to establish liberty of conscience, that having 
 already been done for you by England at a time of persecution, 
 banishment and bloodshed. You arc, in fact, the result of that 
 
 •h — ot' that struggle. Give us but twenty years to extin- 
 ii the fires of the Inquisition, which are continually breaking 
 out in different parts, 'throughout the vast extent of Spanish 
 America. You have not been exposed to the dangerous influ- 
 ence.- of France from 1810 to 18 — and 1 know not what, dis- 
 turbing you with pernicious writings and evil examples, hold- 
 ing up alternately, as the maximum bunum of governments, first 
 the Republic, then the Empire, next the restored monarchy, 
 awain the popular monarchy — then throwing down monarchy 
 and restoring the Republic — crushing the Republic and estab- 
 lishing the Empire. . . . You have not had, as we have, 
 a more fortunate republic, such as the United States, as a 
 
 Jibor, tantalizing you by holding up as examples, its liber- 
 ties, its wonderful progress and its federation. How many 
 years will you allow us to experiment with these several models 
 of human perfection? Xot even twenty ! Why, twenty years 
 hardly elapse after we achieve our independence, and commence 
 to put in practice the theories recommended by different author- 
 ities, some good and some spurious, before discord reigns again 
 throughout our land ; Europe intervenes ; war is again kindled 
 in Mexico, in Chili, in St. Domingo, in Peru; the (niarani 
 Indians, tutored by the Jesuits, enter the arena, attempting to 
 put over us a savage chief whom they consider of Divine ap- 
 pointment, and you have the field of Agramante. 
 
 But, in the mean time, do you imagine that those countries 
 have been ruined ? Mistaken notion of old fashioned common 
 There was a time when the United States, which now 
 clothe the world with their cotton, sent the firsl seven bales to 
 England. You '.veil remember how long ago thai was. Well, 
 in less time, the Argentine Republic has become the chief
 
 37 
 
 market for hides and the second for wool — Chili holds the 
 highest rank for copper and silver, and her coal supplies the 
 entire Pacific coast. Without the saltpetre of Peru, fewer 
 cannon shot would be fired in Europe, and without her guano 
 the European soil would be less fertile. Quinine is exclusively 
 the production of Bolivia, and indigo and cochineal form the 
 riches of Central America ; Ecuador and Colombia participa- 
 ting in a greater or less degree in each of these productions ; 
 and we must not forget to mention Coffee, which constitutes 
 the wealth of Brazil. All these great and growing indus- 
 tries commenced with the revolution, and have since been 
 developed, Spain having been ignorant of the capacity of Amer- 
 ican soil. There is not among them a single State which is 
 not constructing railroads, or has not had them in operation 
 for some time past ; and while the press here has but recently 
 announced the project of a code of civil laws of Xew-York, we 
 have already had commercial, civil and criminal codes in force 
 in different sections of South America, from five to ten years 
 back. I think we shall have to fight once more to establish 
 the system of public schools. We will fight, and it will be 
 established. Look at the following statement of a newspaper, 
 " The Standard," of Buenos Ayres, published in your own 
 language. 
 
 THE PROGRESS OF FIVE YEARS 1860 — 65. 
 
 When we look back only five years, and compare the Buenos Ayres 
 of 1860 with that of to day, we find a wonderful improvement, and 
 persons who have returned hither after that short interval confess the 
 change almost similar to that observed among British Colonies. It 
 may form a just motive for pride with our countrymen, that this great 
 progress has been mainly owing to English enterprise and the increased 
 influx of capital and emigrants from the British Islands. 
 
 In 1860, there were but 15 miles of railway in the River Plate. In 
 1865, we have over 200 miles open to traffic, as many more actually in 
 construction, besides concessions granted for 500 miles not yet begun. 
 
 In 1860, the only steam communication with Europe was by the 
 Royal Mail. In 1865, we count four lines of steamers plying monthly 
 with Europe, and before the year is out we shall probably have a 
 steam-line to the United States, and two more to the Old World.
 
 38 
 
 In I860, Buenos Ayres could hardly boast a dozen private edifices 
 worth £10,000 or over. In 1865, there are more than 200. 
 
 In 1860, the only Bank was the Casa de Moneda. In 1865, we have 
 three in the city, four branches in the country districts of Buenos 
 Ayres, and a score in the Provinces, besides several in formation on 
 both sides of the La Plata 
 
 In 1860, the Wool-exports of Buenos Ayres amounted to the value 
 of £1,000,000. In 1865, our clip is estimated at £2,500,000. 
 
 In 1860, the Custom-house of Buenos Ayres yielded a revenue of 
 $3,000,000. In 1865, it gives nearly six millions hard dollars. * 
 
 In 1860, the number of emigrants arrived was 6000. In 18 35, it 
 exceeds 12,000. 
 
 In 1860, the price of good land in this Province averaged £3000 per 
 square league. In 1865, it is about £6000. 
 
 In 1860, the city had but two markets and two theatres. In 1865, 
 we have six markets and four theatres. 
 
 In 1860, the newspaper circulation of Buenos Ayres amounted to 
 2000 copies (of which 300 English.; In 1865, it exceeds 10,000 (of 
 which 1700 English.) 
 
 In 1860, Fire and Life Insurance was a thing unknown. In 1865, 
 we have a dozen English Insurance agencies, and every second house 
 
 is insured. 
 
 In 1800, there was not one British enterprise or joint-stock company 
 
 in the River Plate. In 1865, we have the following: 
 
 London and River Plate Bank - - - £2,000,000 
 
 Great Southern Railway - 750,000 
 
 Northern Railway - 160,000 
 
 Central Argentine Railway - 1,000.000 
 
 Boca and Ensenada Railway - - 150,000 
 
 San Juan Mining Co. - 100,000 
 
 Beside several projects, many of undoubted realization : 
 
 London, Brazilian and Maua Bank - - £5,000.000 
 
 Eastern Argentine Railway - - - 1,000,000 
 
 Dolores extension [G. Southern] - - - 600,000 
 
 Cordoba Land, Company - - - 1,000,000 
 
 Morgan Beef Lacking Company - - - 150,000 
 
 River Plate Steamboat Company - 150,000 
 
 And many others which do not at present occur to us. Here we 
 
 have an aggregate of £12,000,000 of British capital, without taking 
 
 accounl of the immense fortunes belonging to British residents, all of
 
 39 
 
 which is being actively employed for the industry and progress of the 
 country. We doubt if there be any other part of the globe, not a Brit- 
 ish colony, in which so much English capital has been invested, and 
 without any vain glory we may lawfully say that the advancement of 
 Buenos Ayres dates from the same epoch — 1860 — as when British 
 public enterprise first appeared in the River Plate. 
 
 But I invite you to cast a glance upon the actual situation of* 
 South America, over which the conflagration of war has spread 
 almost from one extremity to the other, and you will see that 
 she is not to blame for one half of her misfortunes. What do 
 you see in fact ? The island of St. Domingo occupied by Spain, 
 who imagined that the people were clamoring to resume the 
 broken chain of colonization ; and after three years of war with 
 that people, we see Spain herself confessing that she had been 
 mistaken. Do not the pious hear the bells say just what they 
 wish to hear ? In the " Revue des deux Mondes" of 1861, it 
 is explained how Spain caused herself to be called there by the 
 treaty of 1856, and how quickly she answered to her own call. 
 Mexico, also, clamored for an Emperor, to insure to the 
 church its own property. This is the official truth, the probable 
 truth, the truth but not the whole truth, as Lincoln said. The 
 whole truth, is, that for some time back the era of the Caesars 
 has been revived in Europe, the political principles which are 
 the basis of the United States government have been opposed, 
 •and, in their stead, the method employed for the regulation of 
 nations is the calculation of the parabola described by the can- 
 non ball. What fault is it of Mexico, that this or the other 
 political theory has been tried in Europe where so many have 
 been under proof without success, and that the war of the United 
 States gave to European power the opportunity of bringing 
 her imperial theories to their very doors, as a stumbling block 
 to their advance. Nevertheless, Mexico is suffering the conse- 
 quences. But yet, Mexico, so undervalued, so incapable of 
 government, so demoralized as it is thought to be, did not 
 succumb in Puebla, as Rome did at Pharsalia ; and tiring out 
 her detractors, and would-be subduers, she begins to interest 
 the world by her courage, her constancy in misfortune, and her 
 love for Republican institutions. If Tallyrand still lived, he
 
 40 
 
 would say to the present emperor what he in vain said to the 
 first : " Your majesty will never hear the last shot fired in a 
 war with a people who have fought eight hundred years with 
 the Moors." South America consummated her independence 
 by defeats, until, from the contusion, came forth the Grants and 
 the Shermans, the Bolivars ami the San Martins, who end in 
 one campaign a snuggle of four years. If the saying of Paul 
 June-. '• I have just begun to fight," when his vessel was sink- 
 ing and he was told to surrender, is North American, South 
 is a colossal Paid Jones who makes the same heroic 
 speech from the River Plata and Conception to Central Amer- 
 ica and Mexico. Colonel Pringles, my compatriot, hemmed 
 in on the sea coast by the Spaniards, plunged into the sea with 
 his detachment of cavalry, and continued fighting among the 
 waves without surrendering. The enemy respected that hero- 
 ism, and not only allowed him to pass, but escorted him to his 
 army. 
 
 A so-called Spanish diplomatic agent presents himself in 
 Peru, claiming to establish a treaty of independence, and with- 
 out awaiting a reply, a Spanish scientific commission declares 
 the o-uano island- of Chinchas annexed to the Museum of Ma- 
 drill. America is indignant at the recovery; the press of Chili 
 laugh- a lii lie at the joke ; the queen disapproves the recovery, 
 and nev< rtheless retains the islands. The Government of Peru 
 wish.'- to overlook tin grievance, but the people rise up, and 
 civil war breaks out. Spain increases her squadrons, — not 
 satisfied with the three millions which her agent had demanded 
 as an indemnity, — and picks a quarrel with Chili on the absurd 
 pica tint -be had omitted to salute her flag! It would scarcely 
 be more ridiculous for any one of us to confront an English 
 Lord in his own country, in his own house, and exact from him 
 a well bred salute under pain of instant chastisement if he 
 does ■ in .v'latis required of him. And although 
 
 Spain vi with regard to St. Domingo, and disap- 
 
 prove -I the ;. t of her agent- in Peru, and of her ministers in 
 Chili, — a- hi- majesty the emperor may have been mistaken in 
 Mexico;— > 11 liable to err, — America is none the less 
 
 accused of disturbing the stream, as in the fable of the wolf
 
 41 
 
 and the lamb, — and if, in her innocence, she protests that she 
 was not even born at the time of the offence, they reply that it 
 then must have been her AMERICAN COUSIN, which, for 
 the purpose, amounts to the same thing. 
 
 Another American war is raging over half the American 
 continent, — the war of Paraguay with Brazil, the Argentine 
 Republic and Uruguay. 
 
 Here, in Providence, in Mr. Brown's library, you will find 
 four hundred volumes written on that war, commencing by a 
 bull of Pope Alexander VI. I will give you an appendix to 
 those books. You will remember that in Massachusetts the 
 Puritans attempted to put in practice the laws of Moses. In 
 Paraguay, the Jesuits attempted to prove certain theories of 
 government deduced from the Epistles of St. Paul and the tra- 
 ditions of the primitive times of the church. They instituted 
 a paternal theocratic government, with all the peculiar charac- 
 teristics of their order : abnegation of the individual, passive 
 obedience perinde ac cadaver, community of property, poverty 
 of the individual and wealth of the State. They made their 
 experiment in corpore vili, on conquered Indians ; and were 
 successful so long as there was a Father Jesuit to ring the bell 
 for the people to go to their work, to go to meals, to go to 
 prayers, to perform drills, to extinguish their fires at bed-time, 
 to rejoice when the bells rang merrily or be saddened when they 
 tolled solemnly for the dead. So successful was their experi- 
 ment, and so advantageous, — not for the paternally governed 
 Indians but for the governing Fathers, — that the Catholic kings, 
 whose authority the Indians of the Paraguayan missions did not 
 recognize, save through the missionaries, made a general onset 
 upon the Jesuits throughout the whole extent of Spanish Amer- 
 ica, and, in one night, had them all expelled. After this exo- 
 dus, the consequences of the paternal government were evident. 
 The Fathers had been taken away ; hundreds of bee-hives had 
 been bereft of their queens ; confusion reigned over the whole 
 land ; the human bees, educated to obey another's will, dis- 
 persed and wandered helplessly for the want of the regulating 
 power which had thought for them and given them life. The 
 revolution came next, and a political disciple of the Jesuits
 
 42 
 
 established bis government upon the basis of the passive obe- 
 dience of the human bee, and thus For half a century was the 
 Gruarani State, peacefully governed. He was succeeded by 
 the first one who happened to turn up when the tyrant died, 
 who, in his turn, appointed by testament his son as his succes- 
 sor, only two or three years ago. Here Ave see a Republic (?) 
 that in fifty-four years has had but two dictators. Few mon- 
 archies in the world can point to such long reigns. Since the 
 time of the Jesuits, the government carries on, for its own ac- 
 count, all foreign commerce ; it sells the tobacco, the yerba 
 mate, the timber of the forests. The citizen of that model 
 republic has the right to work, and that of selling to the gov- 
 ernment at the price designated by it. The second of the 
 Dictators, putting himself in contact with the external world, 
 provided himself, in England, with arms, steamers, machinists, 
 engineers and captains, and one day, to the surprise of all 
 Paraguay, — which had been shut up within itself for half a 
 centurv, indifferent to the Avar of independence in Avhich it took 
 no part, — his son invades Mattogrosso on one side, and Corri- 
 entes on the other, without giving notice to Brazil or the 
 Argentine Republic thus assaulted, until after the attack was 
 made. 
 
 This war is noAv raging because two centuries ago, certain 
 worthy priests imagined they had invented a government ad- 
 equate to the condition of their savage neophytes, and ad 
 niiijoreni Del gloriam. But whatever the result of that war 
 may be. — and what it will be is hardly doubtful, — Paraguay 
 will remain open to commerce and the civilized world, and the 
 rich gifts of the torrid zone will descend, by our majestic rivers, 
 to the mouth of the Plata, to unite with those brought from 
 temperate climes; and perhaps, we may even realize the idea 
 of traversing by canals the land which divides the Araguai, — 
 a "branch of the Plata, — Avith the Madeira, a branch of the 
 Amazon, which, by nature is connected with the Orinoco ; 
 thus presenting to astonished mankind, that part of the world 
 which has been held last in reserve for the development of its 
 resource — the world of the Amazon — with a fluvial navigation 
 of one thousand two hundred tributary rivers crossing the im-
 
 43 
 
 mense valley of the Amazon, which, of itself, is a world, and 
 emptying their waters in the Caribbean Sea at the North ; in 
 the River Plata at the South ; and in the Amazon on the East. 
 
 To return from the imagined future to the realities of the 
 present. Your undertakings in the River Plata, and the enter- 
 prize set on foot by you in Paraguay, will receive a new impe 
 tus, and the cannon which now thunder in the solitudes of 
 Paraguay, the armies which penetrate in the villages and 
 missions, surrounded as far as the eye can reach by immense 
 orange groves, may be the precursors of American industry, 
 removing the obstructions which checked the passage of your 
 river steamers to the centre of America, where the cotton plant 
 grows spontaneously in its native soil, where iron ore stains 
 the ground with its red oxide, where the palm and date trees 
 waive their stately branches, while gaily colored birds feast 
 unmolested on their fruit. 
 
 Having shown the good and evil influences which affect us, 
 I will close this long exposition by pointing out one North 
 American influence which is still wanting. Man does not live 
 by bread alone ; and we have New-England to prove it for the 
 honor of the human race, and in compliance with the precept, 
 I have already shown you how the spirit of Horace Mann col- 
 onized South America, raising excellent schools wherever his 
 doctrines are known. This moral action should be continued, 
 spread abroad, strengthened. Your philanthropy is so great 
 that even after shedding its influence all around you, applying 
 balm and healing to every wound, you have still enough to 
 spare. The Bible Societies annually expend a million and a 
 half of dollars, to take the light of Christianity to the most 
 remote portions of the globe. But South America does not 
 participate in these gifts, nor would she yet accept them in that 
 form. She needs to be instructed, not in the written word, but 
 in the practical Christian spirit. You have founded a normal 
 school, in Providence, to prepare teachers to take to the South 
 and bestow the bread of morality on the freed people, by culti- 
 vating their minds. Governor Andrew has already sent six 
 hundred teachers to Washington Territory, to prepare it to 
 assume the dignity of a State. This is the crowning form for
 
 44 
 
 propagating the principles of the gospel, together with freedom 
 and free labor. This is what South America needs and would 
 accept. In the schools which I have visited, French is taught 
 in some, German in others, Spanish in none. Are your teach- 
 er.- preparing to go to France to teach the principles of Ameri- 
 can Liberty ? The Spanish language is the key of South Amer- 
 ica. Your great historians owe to it their fame ; your naviga- 
 tors, engineers and builders require it whenever they travel ; 
 on either side of Cape Horn, from California to Havana, their 
 vessels touch the coast or penetrate to the interior. In the 
 olden time, when nations looked hack into the past while ad- 
 vancing, the Greeks learned the Egyptian language, the 
 Romans learned Greek, the barbarians Latin. They feared to 
 <Xo astray. Now, however, that the nations are self-reliant and 
 progressive, it is the language of the future which they should 
 learn, and English is the language of the oceanic world, as 
 Spanish is the language destined to spread itself in continuity 
 with the English throughout the vast extent of* South America. 
 The Castilian language lies before the North American people 
 like a conducting wire, and should be the language taught in 
 the schools where any other language is taught besides En- 
 glish. Your teachers will then open colleges in twenty South 
 American States, in two hundred capitals of Provinces, in a 
 thousand towns and villages, and with advantage to themselves, 
 will prepare the ground for the plough, the cultivator, the 
 sowing and reaping machines, and the six thousand six hun- 
 dred patents of invention granted by your patent office this 
 vcar. which are not now used among us, because the under- 
 standing of the people is not prepared to appreciate them. 
 
 This is the only conquest really worthy of a free people ; this 
 is the " Monroe Doctrine" in practice; this the initiatory part 
 opened to Rhode-Island in the River Plata ; this my title to 
 accept a place in the Historical Society, which has honored 
 me by making me one of its members.
 
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