Retrospect. 459 



politico- economical features that the voyage of the Novara has 

 reacted in a suggestive and instructing manner upon those 

 who were privileged to belong to the Expedition. It has 

 widened the horizon of political knowledge, presented the 

 opportunity of instituting interesting comparisons between 

 the conditions of the various countries visited, and has fur- 

 nished many an instructive insight into the transmuting 

 process, which the possession of civil and religious liberty 

 effects upon the material welfare and intellectual energy of 

 every race and land, from pole to pole. And although man- 

 kind is subjected to the powerful influences of climate, 

 nourishment, soil, and natm'al phenomena in general, yet it is 

 not less certain that by ffeely developing the physical and 

 intellectual powers, those influences may be materially limited 

 in extent of operation, and modified in practice ; so that, 

 while we see a people inhabiting a country, where Nature has 

 lavished her utmost treasures of fertility, beauty, and loveli- 

 ness, languishing spiritually and physically under the oppres 

 sion of a despotic power, and the land itself hastening to im- 

 poverishment and decay, we perceive on the other hand that 

 another, far less favourably situated, has been able under jfree 

 institutions to become by its own unaided energy the marvel 

 of all nations, colonizing every region of the earth, and ex- 

 tending its commercial and political importance over the 

 entire universe. 



Wliat a melancholy picture of stagnation and decay is pre- 

 sented by the Spanish and Portuguese possessions in Asia, 



