This form of colonisation, whose prime cause was to be found in persecution, not in the execution of a preconceived plan, resulted in the existence, at the end of the eighteenth century, of thirteen colonies peopled exclusively by men of the white races, originally natives of the countries of Northern Europe, who had transported to this new soil their manners and customs, their social and political laws, their liberal traditions and their economic system, so that from the moment they declared themselves independent, they were able immediately to form a single nation, united by all the ties which make for the cohesion of a people.[11] [Footnote 11: The late Signor Pellegrini, in his anxiety to defend the Latin races, is not strictly impartial. At the time of the Declaration of Independence the population of the States was very largely English (with a substratum of Dutch in New York) but of different periods; and these different periods preserved their own traditions. The difference between the New England Quaker and the Kentucky trapper, or the Virginian fox-hunting squire, and the Dutch patroon or Highland crofter, was as great as any to be found among the Latin races, if not greater, and was largely a difference of arrested periods as well as a racial and a social difference. The result was that Federalism was accomplished peacefully only by the genius of Hamilton.——[TRANS.]] To attain such progress, to reach the summit on which they rest to-day, the United States had only to persist in the same path, to follow the same groove, and the incontestable merit of this people and of its great statesmen is that they have been faithful to the principles of liberty and equality which they inherited from their ancestors, the venerable “conscript fathers”; principles which they ratified in the admirable Constitution whence this vast political organism has derived its cohesion, its vitality, and its strength. How different were the origins of the peoples of Latin America! The Spanish sailors did not cross the ocean like the passengers of the _Mayflower_, or the companions of Penn, seeking solitary shores, known though distant, where they might establish a home, there to live and labour in peace and liberty. The Spanish navigators, as brave as they were audacious, launched themselves into the unknown, guided only by their own genius, in order to discover a world, to conquer new lands, new subjects, for their country and their king; and in the pursuit of that heroic dream they performed exploits which to this day amaze us by their audacity. These were the famous _conquistadores_, whom one of their descendants, José Maria Hérédia, has celebrated in the admirable lines:—— “As from the natal charnel-heap a flight Of falcons: sick of purseless pride at home By Murcian Palos pilots and captains come With brutal and heroic dreams alight: