America—Hayti and Brazil; the foremost tradition of
Africa, the hindmost of Europe set down on American soil.
The negro empire appears the most successful, the most
promising. There alone is no hereditary slavery. Over
Cuba, France and England still hold up the feeble hands
of Spain—whence at last freedom seems dropping into
the slaveys expectant lap. The rest of Spanish America
has the form of a republic—a republic whose only
permanent constitution is a cartridge-box, which blows
up once a year. Look at Mexico—I am glad she is going
swiftly back to the form of despotism; she is capable of
no other reality. How the Western vultures fly thitherward!
Where the carcase of a nation rots there will the
fillibusters be gathered together. Every raven in the hungry flock of American politicians looks that way, wipes his greedy beak, prunes his wings, and screams "Manifest Destiny!"
In South America there are ten "Republics." They cover three and a half millions of square miles, and contain twelve million men. But they do less for mankind than Holland; nay, Basil and Zurich do more for the human race than these "Republics," which only blot the continent. No idea is cradled in Spanish America; no books are written there; none read but books of "Devotion," which ignorance long since wrote. Old Spain imports from France the filthiest novels of the age; new Spain only the yet more deadly books of Catholic "Devotion." The "laws" of the Chilian "Republic" are printed in Spain, where no Chilian ship ever sailed. The Amazon has eighty thousand miles of navigable water,—near a hundred thousand, say some, the survey is conjectural,—and drains into the lap of America, a tropic basin, the largest, the richest on the globe, with more good land than all Europe owns; therein streams larger than the Danube discharge their freight. But only a single steamer disturbs the alligator on its mighty breast—that steamer built and owned at New York. Parà at its mouth is more than three hundred years old, yet has not twenty thousand souls. If the South American "Republics" were to perish this day, the world would hardly lose a valuable experiment in Spanish political or social life, hardly a visible promise of future prosperity; so badly flourish the Spanish scions set
