TRINIDAD: THEN AND NOW. 



23 



" At the time of the discovery of America the 

 Spaniards were, perhaps, less fitted than any other 

 nation of Western Europe for the task of American 

 colonization. Spain was neither rich, populous, nor 

 industrious. Her long continuous warfare with the 

 Moors had not only given her little leisure to culti- 

 vate the arts of peace, but had taught her to acquire 

 a disdain for manual work, which helped to mould 

 her colonial administration and influence all her 

 subsequent history. And when the termination of 

 the last of these wars left her mistress of an united 

 Spain, and the exploitation of her own resources 

 seemed to require all the energies she could muster, 

 an entire new hemisphere was suddenly thrown 

 upon her, and given into her hands by a papal decree 

 to possess and populate. Instituting at home an 

 economic policy which was almost epileptic in con- 

 sequence, she found her strength dissipated, and 

 gradually sank into a condition of economic and 

 political impotence." 



The arrogant assumption of the Spaniards of a 

 divine right to one half of the New World — a certain 

 pope having given the other half to Portugal* — and 

 their consequent monopoly of trade, could not for a 

 moment be tolerated by the enterprising mariners of 

 England and France, who banded themselves together 

 for mutual def enee and for the plunder of the com- 

 mon enemy. This state of matters soon brought a host 



* Pope Alexander VI. — drawing his pen through the centre of the 

 Atlantic, as depicted on the map—in his famous Bull of 4th May, 

 1493, decreed all heathen nations to the East to belong to Spain, all 

 to the West to Portugal. 



