130 



COLOMBIA. 



has never yet had justice done it, and of which in 

 Europe we still know but little. 



There has seldom, perhaps, existed in the 

 world, a more interesting scene than is now pass- 

 ing in South America ; or one in which human 

 character, in all its modifications, has received so 

 remarkable a stimulus to untried action ; where 

 the field is so unbounded, and the actors in it so 

 numerous ; where every variety of moral and phy- 

 sical circumstance is so fully subjected to actual 

 trial ; or where so great a number of states living 

 under different climates, and possessed of differ- 

 ent soils, are brought under review at the same 

 moment; are placed severally and collectively 

 in similar situations ; and are forced to act and 

 think for themselves, for the first time : where 

 old feelings, habits, laws, and prejudices, are 

 jumbled along with new institutions, new know- 

 ledge, new customs, and new principles, all left 

 free to produce what chance, and a thousand un- 

 thought of causes, may direct ; amidst conflict- 

 ing interests and passions of all kinds, let loose to 

 drift along the face of society. To witness the 

 effects of such a prodigious political and moral 



