George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10

[47] and the overthrow of feudalism throughout Europe:

Chap. I.} 1778.

but Louis the Sixteenth and Marie Antoinette, when they embarked for the liberation of America, pleasure on the prow, and the uncertain hand of youth at the helm, might have cried out to the young republic which they fostered: Morituri te salutant, ‘The doomed to die salute thee.’

The Catholic king might love to avenge himself on England by worrying her with chicanes and weakening her by promoting dissensions in her dominions; but he had learned from experience to recoil from war, and longed for tranquillity in his old age. A very costly and most unsuccessful expedition against Algiers, and a protracted strife with Portugal respecting the extension of Brazil to the La Plata, where Pombal by active forethought long counterbalanced superior power, had wasted the resources of his worldwide monarchy. Its revenue amounted to not much more than twenty millions of dollars, and a large annual deficit rapidly increased the public debt. Every consideration of sound policy enjoined upon the ruler of Spain to husband for his land the blessings of peaceful times; and, above all, as the great possessor of colonies, to avoid a war which was leading to the complete and irretrievable ruin of the old colonial system.

The management of its foreign dependencies— colonies they could not properly be called, nor could Spain be named their mother country—was to that kingdom an object of anxiety and never-sleeping suspicion, heightened by a perpetual consciousness that the task of governing them was beyond its ability. The total number of their inhabitants greatly