They seek the fabulous ore that comes to birth And ripens in Cipango’s distant mines, And the trade-wind their long lateens inclines Toward the dim limits of the Western earth.” These first colonisers of Spanish America——soldiers, missionaries, officials, adventurers, men without family——seized upon a whole continent, which they discovered and conquered at the price of unheard-of exertions. They parcelled out the land, subjugated the native tribes, reducing them to servitude in their famous _encomiendas_, or putting into experimental practice, as in the Jesuit missions, theories of collectivism, which is to-day regarded as a modern invention. It was a true feudal system that arose in the new world.[12] [Footnote 12: It must be remembered, in comparing North with South America, that the former also had its period of extensive slavery, its plantations worked by convict labour, and for a period an almost feudal system.——[TRANS.]] If, on the one hand, the native races were initiated into the doctrines of Catholicism in exchange for their liberty and independence, they did not, on the other hand, receive from their masters any political instruction, but preserved their habits of submission and passive obedience to their chief, which constituted their sole political tradition. When, therefore, the day of emancipation arrived, and this enormous colony, in arms against its oppressors, declared itself independent, and divided itself into several Republics, the great mass of the population consisted of Indians converted to Christianity, and half-breeds, who preserved their habits unchanged and had no ideas, no traditions, other than that of government by individual might. Only in the urban centres did the white race, with its conception of political institutions, predominate. And when the new Government wished to organise itself in an independent manner, the two tendencies and traditions, which correspond to two distinct mentalities, violently clashed, and began that long struggle, not wholly terminated even to-day, of which the history is the history of anarchism in America. Another factor that also procured this conflict was the colonial political economy of Spain, which was not only a mistake, but a mistake of the period; an error which closed the whole continent to commerce, shut it away from the outer world, and maintained these masses of humanity in ignorance and isolation, in order to exploit them simply as a machine, or as an element of wealth for the service of their masters. The problem which confronted the politicians of South America when they found themselves face to face with this new people, whom they must of necessity organise, was thus very different from, and far more difficult than the problem which the founders of the North American Union had to resolve.