1896
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[102]
Grant that the South Americans are impetuous, turbulent, unsettled; they are not more so than the mixed races whom the Roman Empire left on the British Isles when it withdrew from them.
To this day there are no roads on those islands so good, no walls so solid, as those built by the Roman conquerors.
Shall we say that it would have been better if Great Britain had remained forever an outlying colony of Rome?
Not at all; she has worked out her own salvation by being thrown on herself, and so must these South American republics.
We did not require Maximilian to leave Mexico for fear he would not govern vigorously under the direction of his master, Louis Napoleon; but we required it in order that Mexico should be free.
See what progress Mexico has made since then-first under Juarez, a pure-blooded Indian, and since 1877 under Diaz!
Brigandage has almost disappeared; the laws are administered; there is religious freedom; the army has been reduced.
Yet there was a time when the very word “Mexican” was a synonym for disorder.
Even a Hispano-American race, it seems, can fulfil the dream of the republic.
New York, Harper and Brothers, 1897.
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