Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/139

MEXICO. thagena took place a year after the restoration, (1815,) and a second expedition, upon a still larger scale, was, as is well known, preparing in 1819, and led to the Revolution of 1820. It is unnecessary to enter into the details of this contest, which possess but little interest for the European reader : it is sufficient, for my present purpose, to state, that in Colum- bia, Mexico, and Peru, the war has been prosecuted with all the energy that the exhausted state of the finances of the Peninsula would admit of ; and that, at the close of a strug- gle of seventeen years, the result has been every where the same. Throughout the whole continent of America, Spain does not retain one single inch of ground : her troops, after a gallant resistance, have been driven from their last strong- holds, both on the Eastern and Western coasts, (St. John of UUoa, and Callao,) and her flag is proscribed on those shores, where, for three hundred years, it waved without a rival. This mighty change has been slowly, but progressively, accomplished. It is not the work of intrigue or faction, but the natural effect of a change as mighty in the minds of men. To recede is now impossible ; not because the Republics of the New World have discovered that standard for regulating political opinions, which has been sought in vain in the Old ; but because, whatever differences may prevail as to form, the consciousness of a political existence, and a sense of the ad- vantages of an unrestrained intercourse with foreign nations, when once acquired, can never again be lost. It might rather, indeed, be a matter of surprise, that, with such in- ducements before them, and so great a superiority of nume- rical strength, the Colonies should not have brought the contest to an earlier termination, did not their position with regard, both to the Mother country, and to each other, suf- ficiently explain the causes of the delay. Scattered over a vast continent, separated by impenetrable wildernesses, or by chains of mountains still more impassable, and kept purposely, under the old system, in a state of igno-