In America the Spanish territories spread from the Equator
northward and southward through all the signs of the Zodiac far
into the temperate zone. Thence came gold and silver to be coined
in all the mints, and curiously wrought in all the jewellers'
shops, of Europe and Asia. Thence came the finest tobacco, the
finest chocolate, the finest indigo, the finest cochineal, the
hides of innumerable wild oxen, quinquina, coffee, sugar. Either
the viceroyalty of Mexico or the viceroyalty of Peru would, as an
independent state with ports open to all the world, have been an
important member of the great community of nations.

And yet the aggregate, made up of so many parts, each of which
separately might have been powerful and highly considered, was
impotent to a degree which moved at once pity and laughter.
Already one most remarkable experiment had been tried on this
strange empire. A small fragment, hardly a three hundredth part
of the whole in extent, hardly a thirtieth part of the whole in
population, had been detached from the rest, had from that moment
begun to display a new energy and to enjoy a new prosperity, and
was now, after the lapse of a hundred and twenty years, far more
feared and reverenced than the huge mass of which it had once
been an obscure corner. What a contrast between the Holland which
Alva had oppressed and plundered, and the Holland from which
William had sailed to deliver England! And who, with such an
example before him, would venture to foretell what changes might
be at hand, if the most languid and torpid of monarchies should
be dissolved, and if every one of the members which had composed
it should enter on an independent existence?