Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/26

Rh The contrast between the Spanish and the Anglo-Saxon settlements in America is amazing. A hundred years ago, Spain, the discoverer of America, had undisputed sway over all South America, except Brazil and the Guianas. All Mexico was hers—all Central America, California unbounded on the north, extending indefinitely, Louisiana, Florida, Cuba, Porto Rico, and part of Hayti. She ruled a population of twenty million men. Now Cuba trembles in her faltering hand; all the rest has dropped from the arms of that feeble mother of feeble sons. In 1750 her American colonies extended from Patagonia to Oregon. The La Plata was too far north for her southern limit, the Columbia too far south for her northern bound. The Mississippi and the Amazon were Spanish rivers, and emptied the waters of a continent into the lap of America, the Mexique Gulf, which was also a Spanish sea. But Spain allowed only eight-and-thirty vessels to ply between the mother country and the family of American daughters on both sides of the continent. The empire of Spain, mother country and colonies, extending from Barcelona to Manilla, with more sea-coast than the whole continent of Africa, employed but sixteen thousand sailors in her commercial marine. Portugal forbade Brazil to cultivate any of the products of the Indies.

Look at this day at Anglo-Saxon, and then at Spanish America. In 1606 there was not an English settlement