in self-government. He was a man of discipline, of order and above all else, he was a worker. He emigrated because he sought to improve his condition, because he saw in the new land beyond the seas a new life, and at the very first opportunity he proved himself able to take care of himself. With such men, it is not to be wondered at, that the new colonies should have been more or less successful from the start, and that the science of self-government should have been so readily acquired.

Your forefathers came over, bringing in their hearts the desire to accomplish great things. As they found everything in an undeveloped state, they were obliged to take the initiative and try to help themselves. From the first, it was a great coöperative effort, everyone working for himself, but at the same time, lending a helping hand to his neighbor.

With us it was otherwise. The sight of such great wealth as the Conquistadores found in some of our countries, the existence of organized states, where the ceremonies were carried on with pomp and splendor, dazzled the more or less ignorant adventurers who were the first comers and completely demoralized them.

I firmly believe, that had those brave men, for brave they certainly were, found in our countries the conditions that the Anglo-Saxon found in this, they would surely have developed qualities that might have been on a par with some of the ones exhibited by your pioneers. There is no telling what would have resulted from altered conditions in our respective territories.

The news of the riches to be found in the New World attracted to it men from all over Europe. To our countries came a very large number of the riff-raff-soldiers, who had been warring all over Europe, men, courageous, but unscrupulous. From the beginning, these men quarreled among themselves, over the spoils; their leaders distrusted each other, they organized themselves into separate camps and from the moment the Conquest was consummated, an actual state of anarchy prevailed throughout the new dominions of the Spanish monarch. A seed that unquestionably bore

fruit to judge from the history of our countries with their perennial upheavals and continued discontent and unrest.

During the first fifty years after the Conquest by the Spaniards, many attempts were made by the Crown to establish good government in the newly-acquired possessions, but it was to no avail. The fact is that the men who came to us were untutored in the science of government. They knew how to rule, but they did not know how to govern. So for two centuries and more, the European and the creole exploited and ruled the land, and the mestizos and the Indians for the benefit of the mother country.

The Indian was kept in a state of abject servitude, he was turned into a beast of burden. The mestizo, physiologically, is nearer to the Caucasian than to the Indian. Physically and morally he is superior to the Indian, and although of less active intelligence than the European or the creole, he is more strong-willed and more persevering and painstaking in all of his undertakings.

In the early days after the Conquest, the mestizo who happened to have one parent of lineage or rank, was given every facility to improve and was placed on an equal footing with the creoles, but as the years advanced, and the mestizos became more and more numerous, the Spaniards began to look on them with distrust and fearing that too much education would give them certain power in the administration, they forbade them to occupy certain positions and prevented them from acquiring too much knowledge. But many of them, notwithstanding these drawbacks, opened a way for themselves, through well regulated homes and families, and placed themselves on a level with their acknowledged masters.

During these years, the Indians were continually oppressed by the European, the creole and even by the mestizo. But, at times, some of the latter would join in the rebellions against their cruel masters, only to be crushed the more, and made to feel the distance that separated each race. And so it was, for more than two hundred years, these two people, the conquerors and the conquered subsisted side by side, living in hatred and distrust of each other, until even

tually out of sheer exhaustion they became apparently reconciled to their respective conditions, when gradually a sort of colonial nationality was evolved.

This nationality formed of creoles and mestizos might have been beneficial to our countries, if it had had time to develop. But unfortunately, just about the time when the Spanish-American was beginning to find himself and to make himself understood, a wave of freedom swept over the northern portion of the American continent, and Spain, fearing that the example would be followed in her dominions, tightened her hold on her unfortunate subjects.

The splendid results of the independence of Anglo America; the advent of new ideas through the French Revolution; the invasion of Spain by Napoleon, all tended to engender in the Latin-American countries the desire of independence.

No longer was it the rebellion of the Indians. These unfortunates had been thoroughly crushed into submission. It was the creoles and the mestizos, who conspired against the authority of the mother country. The people demanded freedom. They sought to have liberties, to be allowed to have a direct voice in the government and the administration of the affairs of their countries.

Spain, notwithstanding her gradual loss of power in Europe, stubbornly refused to listen to the cry of her subjects. The men, who in her own parliament voiced an opinion in favor of the Americans were denounced as traitors to their country and as friends of the French invader.

From 1804, the unrest in Latin America was most evident, it broke out into revolution, first in one section, then in another until in 1810, several of the countries established their independence, organizing a republican form of government. But there was no preparation for self-government, such as the Anglo-American commonwealths had had. They decided on this form of government, because a wave of republicanism had swept over them. The ideas and principles that they adopted were taken from you, from the French, a little from each, and they simply adopted them without studying their own condition, without having any

real instinct for self-government, without having any fitness or being ready for such a state.

The Anglo-American passed from the condition of a good colonial subject to that of a citizen of an independent commonwealth. It was a gradual development. He took with him from one state into the other the experience of years, and a thorough study of the needs of his country and of its people.

On the contrary, our people were totally unprepared for self-government. The number of our people who had risen to positions of distinction while not unappreciable, was scattered over a very large area from Mexico to the confines of South America.

Their

In each of our countries there were racial divisions. populations were made up of creoles, who together with the born Spaniard formed the governing class, the mestizos, striving to be on an equal footing with these, and a long way down in the scale, the Indians, considered inferior, even to the imported African slave.

The three centuries of Spanish domination had been, with but few intervals, years of exploitation, of misrule, of neglect. I do not blame Spain, absolutely. I think that this condition was the natural outcome of the manner in which the Conquest was effected. Many unfortunate circumstances militated to bring about in Latin America conditions that did not occur in Anglo America. Summing these up as shown in the foregoing I can but say that you were more fortunate than we in the beginning, at the very foundation, and that, consequently, when each of us set out in life for himself, all the advantages were with you.

Geographically and climatically you have been in better condition to prosper than we, and, to develop your natural resources. Situated, the original thirteen states, on the east coast of the northern hemisphere of the continent, nearer to Europe, they were in a position to receive an ever increasing influx of the most desirable immigrants from western Europe. In this way, you could offer them climatic conditions more or less similar to theirs; institutions in ad

vance of theirs, but with which they were familiar, if only in principle; a language that was the surest vehicle for the development of trade relations; religious and political freedom, and a virgin country rich in natural resources, a land of opportunities, holding out every possible kind of incentive to those who came to its shores, and inviting them to remain to better their condition and satisfy their ambitions.

Latin America, situated in great part in the southern hemisphere, with many of its centers of population within the tropics, on the Pacific slope, or on the high table lands of the Andes Mountains, has been more or less inaccessible to European immigration.

So while you have had a constant flow of immigrants to your shores, immigrants who have helped to develop your country and its resources, we have been dragging out our existence, trying to free ourselves from the effects of inherent conditions that were drawbacks to our development. Whereas republican institutions and a knowledge of true self-government were the direct inheritance of the AngloAmerican colonies at their birth, as a nation; Latin America, at the time of its inception into the family of nations, was a group of disassociated military nations, utterly unschooled in self-government, and inhabited in greater part by unfused races.

With these conditions, at the time of our political emancipation; it is not to be wondered at that our first steps in the path of freedom and our first attempts at self-government should have been disastrous in every respect. Our educated men, and we had throughout Latin America, many men of mark and distinction-were mostly scholars, theorists and thinkers, but unpracticed in the science of government, and moreover they were idealists and unpractical.

Fine orators, with great versatility, our parliaments, congresses and assemblies vied with each other in scholarly and cultured debate.

All of the great principles that had taken centuries to ripen, in the nations of the Old World, were adopted by us, at a stroke of the pen, and by acclamation. Without having inborn in us any of the principles of true democracy,