414 
JEALOUSIES Oif EaCE. 
in America. Their prerogatives are partly founded on the dis- 
tinction they enjoy in the mother-country ; and they imagine 
they can retain those distinctions beyond the sea, 'Whatever 
may be the date of their settlement in the colonies. The 
other class of nobility has more of an American character. 
It is composed of the descendants of the Conquistador es, 
that is to say, of the Spaniards who served in the army at 
the time of the first conquest. Among the warriors who 
fought with Cortez, Losada, and Pizarro, several belonged 
to the most distinguished families of the Peninsula; others, 
sprung from the inferior classes of the people, have shed 
lustre on their names, by that chivalrous spirit, which pre- 
vailed at the beginning of the sixteenth century. In the 
records of those times of religious and military enthusiasm 
we find, among the followers of the great captains, many 
simple, virtuous, and generous characters, who reprobated 
the cruelties which then stained the glory of the Spanish 
name, but who, being confounded in the mass, have not 
escaped the general proscription. The name of Conquista- 
(lores remains the more odious, as the greater number of 
them, after having outraged peaceful nations, and lived in 
opulence, did not end their career by suffering those mis- 
fortunes which appease the indignation of mankind, and 
sometimes soothe the severity of the historian. 
But it is not only the progress of ideas, and the conflict 
between two classes of different origin, which have induced 
the privileged castes to abandon their pretensions, or at 
least cautiously to conceal them. Aristocracy in the Spanish 
colonies has a counterpoise of another land, the action 
of which becomes every day more powerful. A. sentiment 
ot equality, among the whites, has penetrated every bosom. 
Wherever men of colour are either considered as slaves, or as 
having been enfranchised, that which constitutes nobility is 
hereditary liberty — the proud boast of having never reckoned 
among ancestors any but freemen. In the colonies, the 
colour ol the skin is the real badge of nobility. In Mexico 
as well as Peru, at Caracas as in the island of Cuba, a bare- 
tooted fellow ynth a white skin, is often heard to exclaim ■ 
floes that rich man think himself whiter than I am?” 
I lie population which Europe pours into America being very 
considerable, it may easily be supposed, that the axiom. 
