374 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. 



and tribute and great estates, by means of which the 

 ruling classes could live in boundless luxury, so charac- 

 teristic of the early civilizations, is reproduced in our 

 own time. The Great Powers of Europe are in the midst 

 of a struggle, in order to divide up the whole continent 

 of Africa among themselves, and thus obtain an outlet 

 for the more energetic portions of their populations and 

 an extension of their trade. The result, so far, has been 

 the sale of vast quantities of rum and gunpowder; much 

 bloodshed, owing to the objection of the natives to the 

 seizure of their lands and their cattle ; great demoraliza- 

 tions both of black and white; and the condemnation of 

 the conquered .tribes to a modified form of slavery. 

 Comparing our conduct with that of the Spanish con- 

 querors of the West Indies, Mexico, and Peru, and mak- 

 ing some allowance for differences of race and of public 

 opinion, there is not much to choose between them. 

 Wealth, and territory, and native labor, w r ere the real 

 objects of the conquest in both cases; and if the Span- 

 iards were more cruel by nature, and more reckless in 

 their methods, the results were much the same. In both 

 cases the country was conquered, and thereafter occu- 

 pied and governed by the conquerors frankly for their 

 own ends, and with little regard to the feelings or the 

 material well-being of the conquered. If the Spaniards 

 exterminated the natives of the West Indies, we have 

 done the same thing in Tasmania, and almost the same 

 in temperate Australia. And in the estimation of the 

 historian of the future, the Spaniards will be credited 

 with two points in which they surpassed us. Their be- 

 lief that they were really serving God in converting the 

 heathen, even at the point of the sword, was a genuine 



