"Living among you I have learned to know you, and to think it the greatest of all misfortunes that England and you should look upon each other as enemies. Living among you I have learned that Buenos Aires is not Spain, and that in fighting against Buenos Aires, England fights against a country which every interest binds to her in firm friendship and alliance. Most of you by race and language are Spaniards, many of you were born in Spain, but this country is not Spain, those who live in this country cannot long remain Spaniards. In the Old World we live fettered by the trammels of worn-out traditions, but here in the New World the very air is redolent of freedom. Unarmed, often alone, I have galloped for days over your boundless Pampa, I have shared the hospitality of great landowners, whose possessions exceed the limits of many an English county, and have also often been indebted for a night's lodging to the kindness of some lowly herdsman; from both the reception was the same, a frank welcome, an offer of everything I could require, and no question asked as to whence I came, or when or whither I would go. Galloping north, south, and west over the trackless Pampa, meeting nowhere with any obstacle, finding everywhere frankness and open-handed hospitality, I have felt the blood course through my veins with the joy of unrestricted freedom. I have gazed around me to the very verge of the far-off horizon, seeing nothing which could prevent me from galloping on and on whithersoever my will might lead to, and have known for the first time in my life the proud feeling of absolute independence. "This liberty, which has been to me but as a brief holiday, has been to the majority of the men of this country the leading influence of their life. These immense plains which you call the Pampa are peopled by a hardy race of yeomen, who have grown to maturity in an atmosphere of freedom; from their earliest boyhood they have been accustomed to think and act for themselves, they have been trained in self-reliance, the trammels of the Old World are to them unknown, liberty is with them the very essence of their life. And you who live in the city also feel the impulse of this all-pervading influence. Obsolete laws and customs fetter you and check the growth of the genuine instincts of your nature, but you breathe the free air of America; around you stretch those boundless plains which speak to you whenever you look upon them of the nothingness of man in face of the immensity of Nature. No man, whether he be a Spaniard, an Englishman, or a Frenchman, can live long surrounded by these influences without feeling that in the sight of God all men are equal. It has therefore caused me no surprise to find here men who, in ideas and modes of thought, resemble the most advanced philosophers of Europe.