of the greatest scandals of the age—all of its antecedents, all of its consequences, all that can aid in coming to knowledge of this greatest act of injustice of which the Mexican nation has been the victim.
"Those who cross the sea change their skies, but not their nature. The Anglo-Saxons abandoned their country from physical and moral necessities, and on account of their political and religious quarrels. Transporting themselves to the virgin forests of America, they brought with them the characteristics of Northmen; they were distinguished for sobriety, laboriousness, and industry; for ardor in their enterprises; for constancy, and for that spirit of adventure which subjugates all by the right of conquest. They leveled all obstacles by the vigor of their arm and the sweat of their brow, and from their successes has arisen the hope of acquiring every thing by the inspiration of their talents and the force of their genius.
"The English, of whom John Cabot was a compatriot, came by the northern route [to America], and discovered an immense country, whose rivers are the grandest, whose forests appear to be antediluvian, whose lakes would be called seas in Europe; with harbors on an extensive coast which rival the greatest in the world. It has a soil suited to every purpose of agriculture. In short, it has facilities for all enterprises, and for raising the material of a productive commerce sufficient to establish advantageous relations with the Old World, and for creating an independent society; for supplying its necessities; for making its condition enviable; for rivaling the power, the influence, and the destinies of its parent country.
"The country which they discovered they found scarcely inhabited, although here and there wandered some tribes without social organization, without government, without the power of concentration, even to the extent which numbers give to savages. They [the colonists] early learned that they could establish their dominion without resistance,