ed it in the most unjust and arbitrary manner. They
were themselves, of course, natives of Old Spain--often the pampered
favourites of that corrupt court.

All the officials by which they were surrounded and served were, like
themselves, natives of Spain, or "Gachupinos," (as the Creoles used to
call them,) while the Creoles--no matter how rich, or learned, or
accomplished in any way--were excluded from every office of honour and
profit. They were treated by the Gachupinos with contempt and insult.
Hence for long, long years before the great revolutions of Spanish
America, a strong feeling of dislike existed between Creole Spaniards
and Spaniards of Old Spain; and this feeling was quite independent of
that which either had towards the Indians--the aborigines of America.
This feeling brought about the revolution, which broke out in all the
countries of Spanish America (including Mexico) and which, after fifteen
years of cruel and sanguinary fighting, led to the independence of these
countries.

Some people will tell you that they gained nothing by this independence,
as since that time so much war and anarchy have marked their history.
There is scarcely any subject upon which mankind thinks more
superficially, and judges more wrongly, than upon this very one. It is a
mistake to suppose that a people enjoys either peace or prosperity,
simply because it is quiet. There is quiet in Russia, but to its
millions of serfs war continuous and eternal; and the same may be said
of many other countries as well as Russia.

To the poor slave, or even to the over-taxed subject, peace is no peace,
but a constant and systematised struggle, often more pernicious in its
effects than even the anarchy of open war. A war of this kind numbers
its slain by millions, for the victims of famine are victims of
_political crime_ on the part of a nation's rulers. I have no time now
to talk of these things. Perhaps, boy reader, you and I may meet on this
ground again, and at no very distant period.

Well, it was not in the general rising that Don Pablo had been
compromised, but previous to that. The influence of the European
Revolution of 1798 was felt even in distant Spanish America, and several
ebullitions occurred in different parts of that country at the same
time. They were premature; they were crushed. Those who had taken part
in them were hunted to the death. Death! death! was the war-cry of the
Spanish hirelings, and bitterly did they execu