Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Peculiar Circumstances, Which Cannot Be Justly
Appreciated At Such A Distance, Have Doubtless Rendered Great
Centralization Necessary In The Civil
Administration; every change
would be dangerous as long as the state has external enemies; but the
forms useful for defence
Are not always those which, after the
struggle, sufficiently favour individual liberty and the development
of public prosperity.
The powerful union of North America has long been insulated and
without contact with any states having analogous institutions.
Although the progress America is making from east to west is
considerably retarded near the right bank of the Mississippi, she will
advance without interruption towards the internal provinces of Mexico,
and will there find a European people of another race, other manners,
and a different religious faith. Will the feeble population of those
provinces, belonging to another dawning federation, resist; or will it
be absorbed by the torrent from the east and transformed into an
Anglo-American state, like the inhabitants of Lower Louisiana? The
future will soon solve this problem. On the other hand, Mexico is
separated from Columbia only by Guatimala, a country and extreme
fertility which has recently assumed the denomination of the republic
of Central America. The political divisions between Oaxaca and Chiapa,
Costa Rica and Veragua, are not founded either on the natural limits
or the manners and languages of the natives, but solely on the habit
of dependence on the Spanish chiefs who resided at Mexico, Guatimala
or Santa Fe de Bogota. It seems natural that Guatimala should one day
join the isthmuses of Veragua and Panama to the isthmus of Costa Rica;
and that Quito should connect New Grenada with Peru, as La Paz,
Charcas and Potosi link Peru with Buenos-Ayres. The intermediate parts
from Chiapa to the Cordilleras of Upper Peru form a passage from one
political association to another, like those transitory forms which
link together the various groups of the organic kingdom in nature. In
neighbouring monarchies the provinces that adjoin each other present
those striking demarcations which are the effect of great
centralization of power in federal republics, states situated at the
extremities of each system are some time before they acquire a stable
equilibrium. It would be almost a matter of indifference to the
provinces between Arkansas and the Rio del Norte whether they send
their deputies to Mexico or to Washington. Were Spanish America one
day to show a more uniform tendency towards the spirit of federalism,
which the example of the United States has created on several points,
there would result from the contact of so many systems or groups of
states, confederations variously graduated. I here only touch on the
relations that arise from this assemblage of colonies on an
uninterrupted line of 1600 leagues in length. We have seen in North
America, one of the old Atlantic states divided into two, and each
having a different representation. The separation of Maine and
Massachusetts in 1820 was effected in the most peaceable manner.
Schisms of this kind will, it may be feared, render such changes
turbulent. It may also be observed that the importance of the
geographical divisions of Spanish America, founded at the same time on
the relations of local position and the habits of several centuries,
have prevented the mother-country from retarding the separation of the
colonies by attempting to establish Spanish princes in the New World.
In order to rule such vast possessions it would have been requisite to
form six or seven centres of government; and that multiplicity of
centres was hostile to the establishment of new dynasties at the
period when they might still have been salutary to the mother country.
Bacon somewhere observes that it would be happy if nations would
always follow the example of time, the greatest of all innovators, but
who acts calmly and almost without being perceived. This happiness
does not belong to colonies when they reach the critical juncture of
emancipation; and least of all to Spanish America, engaged in the
struggle at first not to obtain complete independence, but to escape
from a foreign yoke. May these party agitations be succeeded by a
lasting tranquillity! May the germ of civil discord, disseminated
during three centuries to secure the dominion of the mother-country,
gradually perish; and may productive and commercial Europe be
convinced that to perpetuate the political agitations of the New World
would be to impoverish herself by diminishing the consumption of her
productions and losing a market which already yields more than seventy
millions of piastres. Many years must no doubt elapse before seventeen
millions of inhabitants, spread over a surface one-fifth greater than
the whole of Europe, will have found a stable equilibrium in governing
themselves. The most critical moment is that when nations, after long
oppression, find themselves suddenly at liberty to promote their own
prosperity. The Spanish Americans, it is unceasingly repeated, are not
sufficiently advanced in intellectual cultivation to be fitted for
free institutions. I remember that at a period not very remote, the
same reasoning was applied to other nations who were said to have made
too great an advance in civilization. Experience, no doubt, proves
that nations, like individuals, find that intellect and learning do
not always lead to happiness; but without denying the necessity of a
certain mass of knowledge and popular instruction for the stability of
republics or constitutional monarchies, we believe that stability
depends much less on the degree of intellectual improvement than on
the strength of the national character; on that balance of energy and
tranquillity of ardour and patience which maintains and perpetuates
new institutions; on the local circumstances in which a nation is
placed; and on the political relations of a country with neighbouring
states.
CHAPTER 3.28.
PASSAGE FROM THE COAST OF VENEZUELA TO THE HAVANNAH.
GENERAL VIEW OF THE POPULATION OF THE WEST INDIA ISLANDS, COMPARED
WITH THE POPULATION OF THE NEW CONTINENT, WITH RESPECT TO DIVERSITY OF
RACES, PERSONAL LIBERTY, LANGUAGE, AND WORSHIP.
We sailed from Nueva Barcelona on the 24th of November at nine o'clock
in the evening; and we doubled the small rocky island of Borachita.
The night was marked by coolness which characterizes the nights of the
tropics, and the agreeable effect of which can only be conceived by
comparing the nocturnal temperature, from 23 to 24 degrees centigrade,
with the mean temperature of the day, which in those latitudes is
generally, even on the coast, from 28 to 29 degrees.
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