blished the Spanish power here thirty-five
years ago, cut a similar knot with the executioner's sword; but,
my-de'-seh, you are here to establish a _free_ government; and how can
you make it freer than the people wish it? There is your riddle! They
hold off and say, 'Make your government as free as you can, but do not
ask us to help you;' and before you know it you have no retainers but a
gang of shameless mercenaries, who will desert you whenever the
indignation of this people overbalances their indolence; and you will
fall the victim of what you may call our mutinous patriotism."

The governor made a very quiet, unappreciative remark about a
"patriotism that lets its government get choked up with corruption and
then blows it out with gunpowder!"

The Creole shrugged.

"And repeats the operation indefinitely," he said.

The governor said something often heard, before and since, to the effect
that communities will not sacrifice themselves for mere ideas.

"My-de'-seh," replied the Creole, "you speak like a true Anglo-Saxon;
but, sir! how many communities have _committed_ suicide. And this
one?--why, it is _just_ the kind to do it!"

"Well," said the governor, smilingly, "you have pointed out what you
consider to be the breakers, now can you point out the channel?"

"Channel? There is none! And you, nor I, cannot dig one. Two great
forces _may_ ultimately do it, Religion and Education--as I was telling
you I said to my young friend, the apothecary,--but still I am free to
say what would be my first and principal step, if I was in your
place--as I thank God I am not."

The listener asked him what that was.

"Wherever I could find a Creole that I could venture to trust,
my-de'-seh, I would put him in office. Never mind a little political
heterodoxy, you know; almost any man can be trusted to shoot away from
the uniform he has on. And then--"

"But," said the other, "I have offered you--"

"Oh!" replied the Creole, like a true merchant, "me, I am too busy; it
is impossible! But, I say, I would _compel_, my-de'-seh, this people to
govern themselves!"

"And pray, how would you give a people a free government and then compel
them to administer it?"

"My-de'-seh, you should not give one poor Creole the puzzle which
belongs to your whole Congress; but you may depend on this, that the
worst thing for all parties--and I say it only because it is worst for
all--would be a feeble and dilatory punishment of bad faith.