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The colonization of the tropical region, and the whole of the southern
parts of the continent, by Spain and Portugal, was conducted on other
principles, under the influence of other motives, and followed by far
different consequences. From the time of its discovery, the Spanish
government pushed forward its settlements in America, not only with
vigor, but with eagerness; so that long before the first permanent
English settlement had been accomplished in what is now the United
States, Spain had conquered Mexico, Peru, and Chili, and stretched her
power over nearly all the territory she ever acquired on this continent.
The rapidity of these conquests is to be ascribed in a great degree to
the eagerness, not to say the rapacity, of those numerous bands of
adventurers, who were stimulated by individual interests and private
hopes to subdue immense regions, and take possession of them in the name
of the crown of Spain. The mines of gold and silver were the incitements
to these efforts, and accordingly settlements were generally made, and
Spanish authority established immediately on the subjugation of
territory, that the native population might be set to work by their new
Spanish masters in the mines. From these facts, the love of gold--gold,
not produced by industry, nor accumulated by commerce, but gold dug from
its native bed in the bowels of the earth, and that earth ravished from
its rightful possessors by every possible degree of enormity, cruelty,
and crime--was long the governing passion in Spanish wars and Spanish
settlements in America.
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