146 CAPABILITY OP SELF-GOTEEKMEWT. 
to secure tlie dominion of the mother-country, gradually, 
perish ; and may productive and commercial !Europe be 
convinced that to perpetuate the political agitations of the 
New World would be to impoverish herself by diminishing 
the consumption of her productions, and losing a market 
which already yields more than seventy millions of piastres. 
Many years must no doubt elapse before seventeen millions 
of inhabitants, spread over a surface oue-fiflh greater than 
the whole of Europe, will have found a stable equili- 
brium in governing themselves. The most critical mo- 
ment is that when nations, after long oppression, find 
themselves suddenly at lilicrty to promote their own 
prosperity. The Spanish Americans, it is unceasingly 
repeated, are not sufficiently advanced in intellectual cul- 
tivation to bo fitted for free institutions. I remember 
that at a period not very remote, the same reasoning 
was applied to other nations, who were said to have made 
too great an advance in civilization. Experience, no 
doubt, proves that nations, like individuals, find that intel- 
lect and learning do not always lead to happiness ; but 
without denying the necessity of a certain mass of know- 
ledge and popular instruction for the stability of re- 
publics or constitutional monarchies, we believe that sta- 
bility depends much less on the degree of intellectual im- 
provement than on the strength of the national character ; 
on that balance of energy and tranquillity of ardour and 
patience, which maintains and perjictuates new institu- 
tions; on the local circumstances in which a nation is 
placed; and on the political relations of a country with 
neighbouring states. 
