14 INTRODUCTION. 
old monarchy, ecclesiastical, military, and civil, was at once trans- 
ferred to them. The rights of Mayorasgo, which is, in fact, a strict 
entail, by keeping immense tracts of uncultivated land in the hands 
of individuals, checked population by preventing that division of 
property so favourable to cultivation, and consequently to the 
increase of hands.* And, finally, every act of government ema- 
nated directly from the council at Madrid, and every officer of 
consequence, was a Spaniard sent from Europe, so that there was 
no occasion which could call out the talents, or exercise the powers 
of the natives of the country. 
But the political institutions of the British colonies were more 
favourable to the improvement of the states, and the cultivation of 
the land, than any other. Many of the original settlers were men 
who were carried there by the desire of liberty of conscience, who 
took with them that sturdy and independent spirit which resists 
interference, as oppression ; and who, forming their own provincial 
councils, legislated and governed for themselves, and transmitted 
that privilege to their children. The land too was by no means so 
engrossed. Alienation was made easy, and as each person obtaining 
a new grant was obliged to cultivate a certain proportion of his 
land, population increased as rapidly as the means of subsistence ; 
and the governors being mostly chosen from among the colonists 
themselves, there was always a proportion of men so educated as 
to be capable of that important task. 
Hence the states of North America, firm and united in purpose, 
and prepared by the best education (for there is an education of 
states as well as men), rose at once from the state of a disunited 
colony, after an expensive war, to the dignity of a great nation, while 
years must, perhaps, elapse before the harassed provinces of Spanish 
* I am aware that the subdivision of property may be carried to a mischievous length, 
as is now, or will shortly be, the case in France by the operation of the Agrarian law. 
But in Chile the enormous estates are mischievous, because it is impossible that any one 
proprietor in the present state of the country, or perhaps in any state, should attempt the 
improvement of a twentieth part of his land. 
