ART. VII.-IS DEMOCRACY A FAILURE IN THE SPANISH-AMERICAN REPUBLICS?

THE United States of America is the result of a single century of unfolding under a purely democratic form of government. It already rivals the nations of the world in culture, wealth, and manufactures. It certainly leads them in agriculture, in the iron industries, in the application of science to industrial uses, in the intelligence and activity of the masses, as well as in the spirit of enterprise and philanthropy existing among the wealthy; and there is no longer a question as to the unqualified success of pure republicanism for a people whose ethnic type is essentially Anglo-Saxon. But can the same be said of this form of government for some other races of men? Is it not mistake to thrust democracy upon a people naturally weak and in a large measure incapable of self-control? Would not the SpanishAmerican republics, with their slow progress and almost endless revolutions, have been more prosperous and farther advanced in civilization under powerful autocrats or limited monarchs? These are questions asked everyday by students of political science with inflections which affirm, rather than interrogate, the truthfulness of the propositions.

There can be no doubt that, had these people from the beginning been under continuously wise and honest political administration, they would be vastly better off than we now find them, no matter what the form of government might have been. But, as no such a thing was possible without the conquering and ruling of these nations by other races of men, we have before us the instance of a weak people, intrusted 'with their own political affairs, whose maladministration and bad use of power are largely responsible for their backward condition. That they would have been better off, had they remained integral parts of the Spanish empire, is inconceivable. Spain is as low down to-day as any of these children of her former nursing. That they would have been farther advanced under self-appointed monarchs or autocrats of their

own blood is, to say the least, very questionable. That they have been as progressive, all things considered, as were any of the nations of Europe in the infantile periods of their statehood can only be appreciated by a study of racial conditions and of the influences which molded these people and carried them forward to the place where we now find them.

I. Let as glance first at the ethnology of these republics. In considering the rise and progress of nations we can no more ignore the ethnical types of the people than we can ignore powder in considering the force of a cannon ball. We have only to look at Cuba and Porto Rico to imagine what the United States might have been, had she in the beginning fallen into some other hands than the colonizing British. We have only to contrast England and Spain, or Russia and China, as they now exist, after centuries of effort under similar forms of government, to see that the question of race is very important. Our own nation owes its rapid advancement to its Anglo-Saxon heritage and to democracy. Our ancestry, with the exception of a few French and a few Dutch, was almost wholly British. The vigor, enterprise, courage, fair play, and honesty of this race were all passed on to us; and, though well illustrated in other parts of the world, these qualities have never been shown to such advantage as by our own great republic. For, under this form of government, the Anglo-Americans have shown themselves to possess a positive genius for establishing political and religious freedom and for unparalleled development in many directions.

The Spanish-American republics also owe their present position in the family of nations to heritage and to democracy. But what a heritage! During a period in the world's history when a lantern-jawed, ignorant king sat on the Spanish throne and dictated to nearly half of the world; when the Spanish Inquisition was hunting down men, women, and children, of high and low degree, tearing them upon the rack, burning them alive, pinching them to death with red-hot nippers, disemboweling them, stinging them to death with bees, after skinning them to the hips; when Spanish misrule had so degraded labor that all who acquired wealth by traffic or by manual effort were regarded as the scum of the earth; when

to cheat, to steal, to lie, to murder were among the privileges of the privileged classes; when to bribe and be bribed, to plunder in all conceivable forms, to barter influence and honor, to sell official interviews and offices of trust were the highest ideals of a commonwealth-during such a period of corruption and out of such ignoble fiber the Spanish-American colonies were created. When these in turn gave birth to republics, the ethnical relations had become mongrel, and political affairs were even worse.

When the importunate Briton left his shores to help colonize America, he carried with him-besides his truth-loving nature-his wife, his children, and his earthly treasure, determined to build for himself a permanent home in the New World. He did not mix with the aboriginal races; but, like a God-fearing Israelite, he kept himself separate and distinct in all things. His habits, mode of thinking and acting, laws, literature, and institutions as they unfolded were all essentially English; and so conscientiously did he conserve his race that as many as seventy per cent of the people of the United States are now reckoned to be of pure British origin. What a contrast this presents with the Spanish-American republics! In all of these with a population, including Brazil, of not far from fifty million inhabitants-purity of blood is the exception, mongrel, the rule. Three and a half centuries of intermixture by the Spanish, Indian, and negro races—with a sprinkling of Chinese thrown in, as seen in Peru, and a good deal of the bad blood of European adventurers added, as seen in all parts—have produced in these nations a people without a parallel in the history of men. They are of every cast of feature and of every complexion under the sun, ranging from pure whites to coarse-haired Indians, and from pure blacks to Indians with frizzly hair, with sufficient malformations and enough bow-legged dwarfs to show nature's protest in an unmistakable manner. Weighted with such an inheritance, for which present generations are not to be condemned, these republics are struggling nobly—and successfully, too, as we shall later show-for places of respectability among the nations of the world. But they have been held back, and are still being held back, by other causes which must be considered before

one can realize the darkness from which they have come, or how far they have already traveled toward the light.

II. This brings us to notice the effect of religion upon these republics. Before the Pilgrim fathers landed at Plymouth Rock, while their bark was still rolling upon the deep, they framed the constitution for the government of their colony, in which democratic liberty and independent Christian worship were noted articles. When the united colonies triumphed over the mother country, and a constitution was made for the government of a nation, the spirit of those two articles was embodied. Politically and religiously, man was made free. Jew, Mohammedan, Hindu, Barbarian, Roman Catholic, and Protestant were all given equal footing, so far as State was concerned, and everyone was allowed to vote and to worship as he pleased. This placed religion entirely upon its merits. The Puritan spirit which crossed the ocean with the Pilgrims saw that it was kept comparatively pure. And a wholesome rivalry sprang up, with the result that the United States now has a vigorous and healthy religious life seen nowhere else perhaps in the world.

But the trouble with all of the Spanish-American republics is that they have scarcely ever had any religious life. They have system and form and churches and priests and plenty of theology, but very little of the spirit of Him who taught that love is the fulfilling of the law. And this is the result of two causes. First, when these countries were parts of the Spanish empire, ruled by the king and the "Council of the Indies," every office, civil and ecclesiastic, was sold in Madrid for doubloons. Worth was never considered, and the purchaser had no higher motive than to get the greatest possible amount out of his colonial investment. In matters of religion, as in everything else, the great cry was for gain. The priests, with a few exceptions perhaps, were men of mercenary tendencies who could easily be spared from the old country. Paganism, it is true, was partly forced out of the colonies-not by showing the Indians the way of life and love, but by fraud and by heavy penalties inflicted by ecclesiastical authority. In Peru, which will serve as an example of all the rest, a male Indian, marrying a female who would not renounce her idolatry, re

ceived one hundred awful lashes on his bare back in the open plaza. The mita, a law religiously sanctioned for subjecting the Indians to forced labor, caused the wretched people to groan under an oppression they could not endure. Mothers maimed their children, that they might be free from a slavery they abhorred; and the land resounded with the melancholy cry of women bewailing their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons kept in perpetual bondage under pretense of being in debt to their masters. The seventh of the adult male population was subject to this mita, it being the duty of the chiefs to tell off this number and take them to the Spanish towns where they were required. But the seventh part was taken again and again, so that in practice the law subjected a large portion of the people to slavery. If any of the Indians thus told off made their escape by fleeing into the far interior, the cruel Spaniards robbed their relatives of all they possessed, besides practicing other cruelties. Under such oppression the villages gradually decreased in population; but the tyranny grew more shameful, till not a semblance of pity remained with the priests, nor justice with the civil authorities.

History tells us that in 1781, under Tupac Amaru, a descendant of the Inca, the poor, downtrodden Indians arose in revolt as one man. After a bitter resistance they were defeated, and the civil and ecclesiastical authorities rivaled one another in the savage cruelty with which they treated the vanquished. The Inca was condemned to witness the execution of his wife, son, uncle, and all of his captains. He was offered absolution from sin and the promise of eternal rest in the heavenly world, which he received with stoic indifference. His tongue was then cut out, and he was secured to four horses pulling in different directions, and thus killed. His body was burned on the heights of Picchu; his head was stuck on a pole at Tinta; and his arms and legs were sent to different cities. His houses were all demolished, his goods were confiscated, his relatives declared infamous. All documents relating to his descent were burned; all pictures of himself were destroyed; all signs of mourning were prohibited; all Indians were required to dress in Spanish costume; and the use of the native language was prohibited. With a religious inheritance