Page:Mexico in 1827 Vol 1.djvu/168

European reader: it is sufficient, for my present purpose, to state, that in Columbia, 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 struggle 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 strongholds, both on the Eastern and Western coasts, (St. John of Ulloa, 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 advantages 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 inducements before them, and so great a superiority of numerical strength, the Colonies should not have brought the contest to an earlier termination, did not their position with regard, both to the Mother