III
Mere party issues never counted with me. I have read too much and seen too
much. At my present time of life they count not at all. I used to think
that there was a principle involved between the dogmas of Free Trade and
Protection as they were preached by their respective attorneys. Yet what
was either except the ancient, everlasting scheme--
--"_The good old role--the simple plan,
That they should take who have the power
And they should keep who can_."
How little wisdom one man may get from another man's counsels, one nation
may get from another nation's history, can be partly computed when we
reflect how often our personal experience has failed in warning admonition.
Temperament and circumstance do indeed cut a prodigious figure in life.
Traversing the older countries, especially Spain, the most illustrative,
the wayfarer is met at all points by what seems not merely the logic of
events, but the common law of the inevitable. The Latin of the Sixteenth
century was a recrudescence of the Roman of the First. He had not, like the
Mongolian, lived long enough to become a stoic. He was mainly a cynic and
an adventurer. Thence he flowered into a sybarite. Coming to great wealth
with the discoveries of Columbus and the conquests of Pizarro and Cortes,
he proceeded to enjoy its fruits according to his fancy and the fashion of
the times.
He erected massive shrines to his deities. He reared noble palaces. He
built about his cathedrals and his castles what were then thought to be
great cities, walled and fortified.
Pages:
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183