into the brawl of nations that followed the discovery of a new world,
of an unoccupied if not unclaimed inheritance, with a vigor and an
initiative which gained ever-accelerated momentum and power as the
years rolled by. Far and wide, in every sea, through every clime, her
seamen and her colonists spread; but while their political genius and
traditions enabled them, in regions adapted to the physical well-being
of the race, to found self-governing colonies which have developed
into one of the greatest, of free states, they did not find, and never
have found, that the possession of and rule over barbarous, or
semi-civilized, or inert tropical communities, were inconsistent with
the maintenance of political liberty in the mother country. The sturdy
vigor of the broad principle of freedom in the national life is
attested sufficiently by centuries of steady growth, that surest
evidence of robust vitality. But, while conforming in the long run to
the dictates of natural justice, no feeble scrupulosity impeded the
nation's advance to power, by which alone its mission and the law of
its being could be fulfilled. No artificial fetters were forged to
cramp the action of the state, nor was it drugged with political
narcotics to dwarf its growth.

In the region here immediately under consideration, Great Britain
entered the contest under conditions of serious disadvantage. The
glorious burst of maritime and colonial enterprise which marked the
reign of Elizabeth, as the new era dawned when the country recognized
the sphere of its true greatness, was confronted by the full power of
Spain, as yet outwardly unshaken, in actual tenure of the most
important positions in the Caribbean and the Spanish Main, and
claiming the right to exclude all others from that quarter of the
world. How brilliantly this claim was resisted is well known; yet, had
they been then in fashion, there might have been urged, to turn