The plot kept thickening fast and faster after this. New Spain, of course, was Spanish by right of discovery, conquest, and a certain kind of settling. But the Spaniards wanted to keep everyone else away, not only from all they had but from all they wished to have. Their Governor-General plainly showed this by putting up in his palace the figure of a gigantic war-horse pawing at the sky, and by carving underneath, "_The Earth itself is not enough for Us_." Nor was this the worst. No whites, not even the Germans, have ever been so fiendishly cruel to any natives as the Spaniards were to those they had in their power. They murdered, tortured, burnt alive, and condemned to a living death as slaves every native race they met. There were brutal Belgians in the Congo not so very long ago. American settlers and politicians have done many a dark deed to the Indians. And the British record in the old days of Newfoundland is quite as black. But, for out-and-out cruelty, "the devildoms of Spain" beat everything bad elsewhere. Moreover, while English, French, and Spaniards all wanted gold when they could get it, there was this marked difference between the two chief opponents, that while Spain cared mostly for tribute England cared mostly for trade. Now, tribute simply means squeezing as much blood-money as possible out of an enslaved country, no matter at what cost of life and liberty to the people there; while trade, though often full of cheating, really means an exchange of goods and some give-and-take all round. When we consider this great difference, and remember how cruel the Spaniards were to all whom they had made their enemies, we can understand why the Spanish Empire died and why the British lives.