290 DIFFICULTY OF GOVERNING 



up the hands of the Americans, and forcing them 

 to be idle and vicious ; extended this tyranny 

 even to the mind, and forbade the cultivation and 

 exercise of those faculties which, least of all it 

 might be thought, ought to be subjected to the 

 control of despotism. Not only were agriculture 

 and the arts, and manufactures and commerce, 

 prohibited to the natives of the soil ; but litera- 

 ture, and every species of useful knowledge, was 

 rigorously interdicted. To secure this exclusion, 

 the inhabitants were forbid, upon pain of death, 

 to trade with foreigners, none of whom were al- 

 lowed to visit the country : Spaniards themselves 

 could not set foot in the colonies without special 

 permission, and for a limited time ; and even the 

 inhabitants of the different provinces were denied, 

 as far as it was possible, all intercourse with one 

 another, lest by mutual communication they 

 should increase their knowledge. 



The difficulty of governing distant countries 

 with justice, and with due consideration for the 

 rights and happiness of the inhabitants, is fami- 

 liar to the mind of every one who has studied 

 our own Indian politics ; where, with the purest 



