REVIEWS — >~OTES 02f CENTRAL AMERICA. 373 



ca, less than two hundred thousand out of two millions; r.ndin South America at 

 large, the proportions are nearly the same. It is impossible, while conceding all 

 the influence which can be rationally claimed for other causes, to resist the convic- 

 tion that the disasters which have befallen those countries are due to a grand prac- 

 tical misconception of the just relations of the races which compose them. The 

 Indian does not possess, still less the South Sea Islander, and least of all the Negro, 

 the capacity to comprehend the principles which enter into the higher order of civil 

 and political organizations. His instincts and his habits arc inconsistent with their 

 development, and no decree of education can teach him to understand and prac- 

 tise them " 



Here again, we perceive American ideas and prejudices of another 

 kind influencing the deductions of our author. It is difficult indeed 

 for an American, with his Southern helot population, and his "Western 

 E-ed Iudian disputants for the soil claimed by the White supplanter, 

 to take an impartial view of ethnological inquiries. The doctrine of 

 the unity of the human race bears to the American no other meaning 

 than this unpalatable one : That the degraded Negro slave and his 

 White oppressor are of one race and of one blood ; and hence the 

 confusion of ideas relative to the causes of social and political degra- 

 dation in Spanish America. But have not the same causes to a great 

 extent produced the like effects in the Spanish mother country, where 

 no such distinctions of race existed to be violated ? A reference to 

 Prescott's " Philip the Second," — a valuable contribution to Euro- 

 pean History, to which we propose giving the attention it deserves in 

 a future number, — would suffice to show Mr. Squier, that there is little 

 need of any theory of " a practical misconception of the just relations 

 of the races," to account for the degradation either of Spain or her 

 autonomous colonies. In defining the condition of Spain so early as 

 the middle of the sixteenth century, when possessed of resources greatly 

 enlarged, and territory extended by a brilliant career of discovery and 

 conquest, the historian of Philip II., speaks of it as already disclosing 

 "'those germs of domestic corruption which gradually led to its dismem- 

 berment and decay." And again, after noting the fatal blow to Spanish 

 liberty by the overthrow of the patriots on the memorable field of 

 Villalar, he thus refers to the products of the subsequent political 

 tranquility, — such a tranquility as despotism alone renders compatible 

 with life : " Sheltered from invasion by the barrier of the Pyrenees, 

 her people were allowed to cultivate the arts of peace so long as they 

 did not meddle with politics or religion, — in other words, with the 

 great interests of humanity." Such were the causes which produced 

 in Spain the tranquility and the corruption of death ; and all these 

 causes were not Less, but more operative in her Colonies, where the 

 corruption of despotism was present, but without its tranquility ; and 



