146 CAPABILITY OP SELF-GOYEBKMEJTT. 



to secure the dominion of the mother-country, gradually, 

 perish; and may productive and commercial Europe be 

 convinced that to perpetuate the political agitations of the 

 New "World would be to impoverish herself by diminishing 

 the consumption of her productions, and losing a market 

 which already yields more than seventy millions of piastres. 

 Many years must no doubt elapse before seventeen millions 

 of inhabitants, spread over a surface one-fifth greater than 

 the whole of Europe, will have found a stable equili- 

 brium in governing themselves. The most critical mo- 

 ment is that when nations, after long oppression, find 

 themselves suddenly at liberty to promote their own 

 prosperity. The Spanish Americans, it is unceasingly 

 repeated, are not sufficiently advanced in intellectual cul- 

 tivation to be fitted for free institutions. I remember 

 that at a period not very remote, the same reasoning 

 was applied to other nations, who were said to have made 

 too great an advance in civilization. Experience, no 

 doubt, proves that nations, like individuals, find that intel- 

 lect and learning do not always lead to happiness ; but 

 without denying the necessity of a certain mass of know- 

 ledge and popular instruction for the stability of re- 

 publics or constitutional monarchies, we believe that sta- 

 bility depends much less on the degree of intellectual im- 

 provement than on the strength of the national character ; 

 on that balance of energy and tranquillity of ardour and 

 patience, which maintains and perpetuates new institu- 

 tions ; on the local circumstances in which a nation ia 

 placed; and on the political relations of a country with 

 neighbouring states. 



