Fortunately The Number Of Blacks Has Been So Inconsiderable In The New States Of The Spanish Continent That, With The

Exception of the cruelties exercised in Venezuela, where the royalist party armed their slaves, the struggle between the independents and

The soldiers of the mother country was not stained by the vengeance of the captive population. The free men of colour (blacks, mulattoes and mestizoes) have warmly espoused the national cause; and the copper-coloured race, in its timid distrust and passiveness, has taken no part in movements from which it must profit in spite of itself. The Indians, long before the revolution, were poor and free agriculturists; isolated by their language and manners they lived apart from the whites. If, in contempt of Spanish laws, the cupidity of the corregidores and the tormenting system of the missionaries often restricted their liberty, that state of vexatious oppression was far different from personal slavery like that of the slavery of the blacks, or of the vassalage of the peasantry in the Sclavonian part of Europe. It is the small number of blacks, it is the liberty of the aboriginal race, of which America has preserved more than eight millions and a half without mixture of foreign blood, that characterizes the ancient continental possessions of Spain, and renders their moral and political situation entirely different from that of the West Indies, where, by the disproportion between the free men and the slaves, the principles of the Colonial System have been developed with more energy.

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