d their inexperience, their
ignorance and bigotry, make them instruments often, in the hands of the
Bonapartes and Iturbides, to defeat their own rights and purposes. This
is the present situation of Europe and Spanish America. But it is
not desperate. The light which has been shed on mankind by the art of
printing, has eminently changed the condition of the world. As yet, that
light has dawned on the middling classes only of the men in Europe.
The kings and the rabble, of equal ignorance, have not yet received its
rays; but it continues to spread, and while printing is preserved, it
can no more recede than the sun return on his course. A first attempt to
recover the right of self-government may fail, so may a second, a third,
&c. But as a younger and more instructed race comes on, the sentiment
becomes more and more intuitive, and a fourth, a fifth, or some
subsequent one of the ever-renewed attempts will ultimately succeed.
In France, the first effort was defeated by Robespierre, the second by
Bonaparte, the third by Louis XVIII., and his holy allies; another is
yet to come, and all Europe, Russia excepted, has caught the spirit; and
all will attain representative government, more or less perfect. This
is now well understood to be a necessary check on Kings, whom they will
probably think it more prudent to chain and tame, than to exterminate.
To attain all this, however, rivers of blood must yet flow, and years of
desolation pass over; yet the object is worth rivers of blood, and years
of desolation. For what inheritance so valuable, can man leave to his
posterity? The spirit of the Spaniard, and his deadly and eternal hatred
to a Frenchman, give me much confidence that he will never submit, but
finally defeat this atrocious violation of the laws of God and man,
under which he is suffering; and the wisdom and firmness of the Cortes,
afford reasonable hope, that that nation will settle down in a temperate
representative government, with an executive properly subordinated to
that. Portugal, Italy, Prussia, Germany, Greece, will follow suit. You
and I shall look down from another world on these glorious achievements
to man, which will add to the joys even of heaven.

I observe your toast of Mr. Jay on the 4th of July, wherein you say that
the omission of his signature to the Declaration of Independence was by
accident. Our impressions as to this fact being different, I shall
be glad to have mine corrected, if wrong. Jay,