10 MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, WEST INDIES. 



gradually fused in a common nationality, witli like customs, ideas, and aspira- 

 tions, and with a growing capacity for acting in concert for the general welfare. 

 Thus it was that when the metropolis, overrun with foreign armies, found itself 

 unable to maintain its authority in the New World, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, 

 and the other Central American provinces, were suddenly seen to develop into 

 armed nations, in »which the descendants both of the Sj)anish conquerors and of 

 the conquered aborigines were animated by a common sentiment. 



This sudden appearance of new nations, or rather the revival of the old Ameri- 

 can nations, clothed in a vesture of civilisation different from that which they had 

 formerly worn, was not confined to the central regions, but took place also in 

 Columbia, Venezuela, Equador, Peru — in a word, throughout the whole of Spanish 

 America. By a curious irony of fate, the Napoleonic epocli, which was supposed 

 to signalise the close of the revolutionary period, and the re-establishment of 

 autocratic government, led in the New World, on the contrary, to the outburst of 

 a general movement of independence for the Hispano- American race. From that 

 epoch dates the modern history of the southern continent. 



But the new order of things had been prepared by the successful revolt of the 

 British North American colonies, which acquired their independence several 

 decades before the uprise of the Spanish provinces. Not only were the English 

 settlements emancipated at an earlier date, but they have also far outstripped the 

 mixed Spanish communities in social development and general culture. 



Their work, however, was more easily accomplished, and in some respects is per- 

 haps of less significance in the history of mankind. The United States are, so to say, 

 little more than an expansion of the Old World ; in their ethnical elements, 

 whether white or black, they reproduce the social conditions of Europe and Africa 

 in another environment, where the aboriginal element has been mainly eliminated. 

 The tribes tbat have not been extirpated, or that have not been eifaced by complete 

 absorption in the surrounding populations, are not merged in the social system, 

 but live apart, either still in the wild state, or in reserves under Government 

 control. 



But the conditions are very different in Spanish America, where the bulk of 

 the population consists of " Hispanified Indians," who, while receiving European 

 civilisation, and mixing in various degrees with their white conquerors, have none 

 the less remained the representatives of the old American race. The Anglo- 

 Saxons have destroyed or repelled the indigenous populations ; the Iberians have 

 assimilated them, at least on the mainland. In Mexico, and in the other Spanish 

 republics, crossings • and common usages have effected a reconciliation between 

 various races which were formerly hostile, and even totally alien, to each other, 



Latin America, where heterogeneous elements still persist, cannot yet be 

 compared with Anglo-Saxon America for its relative importance as a factor in the 

 equilibrium of the world. But the various republics of which it is composed are 

 none the less increasing in power from decade to decade, and are already suffici- 

 ently consolidated to resist foreign encroachments. Collectively, they occupa' con- 

 siderably more than half of the New World, for they comprise, besides the 



