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other fatal errors in the science of government. 

 Since I developed the immense resources, which 

 the people of both Americas, enjoying national 

 liberty, might find in their own position and their 

 relations with commercial Europe and Asia, one 

 of those great revolutions, which from time to 

 time agitate the human race, has changed the 

 state of society in the vast regions through which 

 I passed. The continental part of the New 

 World is at present in some sort divided between 

 three nations of European origin ; one, the most 

 powerful, is of Germannic race ; the two others 

 belong by their language, their literature, and 

 their manners, to Latin Europe. Those parts 

 of the ancient world, which project farthest to- 

 ward the west, the Iberian Peninsula and the 

 British Islands, are those of which the colonies 

 are most extensive ; but four thousand leagues 

 of coast, inhabited solely by the descendants of 

 Spaniards and Portuguese, attest the superiority, 

 which in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 

 the peninsular nations had acquired by their 

 maritime expeditions over the navigators of other 

 countries. It mav be asserted, that their lan- 

 guages, which are spread from California as far 

 as the Rio de la Plata, and on the back of the 

 Cordilleras as well as in the forests of the Amazon, 

 are monuments of national glory, that will sur- 

 vive every political revolution. 

 The inhabitants of Spanish and Portuguese 



