A gentleman who was in Mexico saw in 1748, in a Spanish manuscript there, the speech which Montezuma delivered to his subjects just prior to his death, and which is probably still in existence: "Kinsmen, Friends, Countrymen, and Subjects: You know I have been eighteen years your sovereign and your natural king, as my illustrious predecessors and fathers were before me, and all the descendants of my race since we came from _a far distant northern nation, whose tongue and manners we yet have partly preserved_. I have been to you a father, a guardian, and a loving prince, while you have been to me faithful subjects and obedient servants. "Let it be held in your remembrance that you have a claim to a noble descent, because you are sprung from a race of freemen and heroes, who scorned to deprive the native Mexicans of their ancient liberties, but added to their national freedom principles which do honor to human nature. Our divines have instructed you of our natural descent from a people the most renowned upon earth for liberty and valor; because of all nations they were, as our first parents told us, the only unsubdued people upon the earth by that warlike nation [Romans] whose tyranny and ambition assumed the conquest of the world; but nevertheless our great forefathers checked their ambition, and fixed limits to their conquests, although but the inhabitants of a _small island_, and but few in number, compared to the ravagers of the earth, who attempted in vain to conquer our great, glorious, and free forefathers," etc.