There is one remark in Mr.
Gallatin's work on which Mr. Wilson would have done wisely to ponder. It
is this:--"The conquest of Mexico is an important event in the history
of man. _Mr. Prescott has exhausted the subject._"]
Our reason for believing that Mr. Wilson has never read the works,
relating to his subject, which have been published only in the original
Spanish or in translations into other foreign languages, is a very
simple one. He produces no evidence that he has ever read them. Some of
them he does not even mention. From none of them does he glean a single
fact that was not ready to his hand in the pages of Prescott. Except in
two or three instances, where he filches a reference from the citations
made by the latter historian, he brings forward no statement contained
in any of these books, either to support his own positions or to refute
theirs. Why did he take from Prescott--to whom on this occasion he
confesses his indebtedness--the facts in relation to the early life of
Cortes, (we would he had borrowed the language as well as the matter!)
if he had himself the means of consulting the works from which
Prescott's account was derived? But it is unnecessary to pursue the
argument; Mr.
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