impassable gulf such as separates the negro or the Australian
bushman from the white man. Central and Southern America thus came
to be peopled by a hybrid race, speaking Spanish, large elements
of which were conscious of their own inferiority. This in itself
would perhaps have been a barrier to progress. But the
concentration of attention upon the precious metals, and the
neglect of industry due to this cause and to the employment of
slave-labour, formed a further obstacle. And in addition to all,
the Spanish government, partly with a view to the execution of its
native policy, partly because it regarded the precious metals as
the chief product of these lands and wished to maintain close
control over them, and partly because centralised autocracy was
carried to its highest pitch in Spain, allowed little freedom of
action to the local governments, and almost none to the settlers.
It treated the trade of these lands as a monopoly of the home
country, to be carried on under the most rigid control. It did
little or nothing to develop the natural resources of the empire,
but rather discouraged them lest they should compete with the
labours of the mine; and in what concerned the intellectual
welfare of its subjects, it limited itself, as in Spain, to
ensuring that no infection of heresy or freethought should reach
any part of its dominions. All this had a deadening effect; and
the surprising thing is, not that the Spanish Empire should have
fallen into an early decrepitude, but that it should have shown
such comparative vigour, tenacity, and power of expansion as it
actually exhibited. Not until the nineteenth century did the vast
natural resources of these regions begin to undergo any rapid
development; that is to say, not until most of the settlements had
discarded the connection with Spain; and even then, the defects
bred into the people by three centuries of reactionary and