But is it not the fact that despotism is the necessary {231} form of all government in these republics, where the division of castes opposes unity and the normal development of nationality? The future of Haytians and Dominicans both is full of grave problems: among the first we find poetry, imagination, a high state of culture, but political evolution is very slow. The peoples of the Tropics seem incapable of order, laborious patience, and method; so that the prodigal literature of San Domingo forms a striking contrast to the archaic quality of its political life. "Its geographical situation," says Señor Garcia Godoy, "places it almost at the mercy of North American imperialism." Hayti is still a barbarous democracy. It is not easy to turn a colony of negro slaves into an orderly and prosperous republic merely by virtue of political charters of foreign origin; and it has not been proved that parliamentarism, municipal life, and the classic division of powers, the creation of the East, form an adequate system of government for negroes and mulattos. In vain did General Légitime, once President of Hayti, affirm that had they been properly encouraged and directed, his people would already have arrived at "the highest degree of prosperity and civilisation"; in vain did he pretend that the decadence of his country was due not to a question of race but to a problem of social economy: excess of taxation and paper money. Hayti possesses immense natural wealth, yet the taxes are crushing, the railways go bankrupt, labourers emigrate, and agriculture and industry are dwindling, as the General recognised; all because the indolence of the race does not permit it to take advantage of the fertility of the soil nor to govern itself. [1] _Histoire de l'Isle cspagnole_, Amsterdam, 1733, vol. iv. p. 362. [2] _Rufinito_, by F. Garcia Godoy, Santo Domingo, 1908, pp. 53, 54. {233} BOOK V _INTELLECTUAL EVOLUTION_ Spain founded universities in America, where she exercised a true monopoly of ideas. The Revolution in her colonies was inspired by the doctrines of the French Encyclopædists. Since then--that is, during the whole of the nineteenth century--the metropolis has been losing the greater portion of her ancient intellectual privileges. Political and literary ideas, romanticism and liberalism, faith in reason and poetic enthusiasm, all these have been imported from France. It is interesting to study the results of this lasting influence in philosophy and letters. {235} CHAPTER I POLITICAL IDEOLOGY Conservatives and liberals--Lastarria--Bilbao--Echeverria--Montalvo--Vigil--The Revolution of 1848 and its influence in America--English ideas: Bello, Alberdi--The educationists.