In writing on this subject one is apt to be carried away by indignation against the Spanish rulers in South America; yet, if we look round at the systems of colonization pursued by other European nations, it will be found difficult to say who has a right to cast the first stone. The Spanish colonies, however, cannot properly be compared with those modern English settlements, to which thousands of the labouring classes have emigrated, and either annihilated the natives, or fenced them off by a system of reserves and isolation. No European labouring class was introduced into South America; the Indians still continued to be the cultivators, the shepherds, and the artizans; and the Spaniards were merely the dominant race. This state of things is more allied to the conditions which now exist in British India or Dutch Java, and there is thus no analogy between the South American settlements and any British colony in the proper acceptation of the word. Yet to Spain the credit is due, in spite of numerous shortcomings, and notwithstanding the oppression of her subordinates, of having endeavoured to establish the wisest, the most humane, and the only successful system of treating natives of an inferior race. It is certain that such a race must either continue to form the mass of the population, amalgamate with their conquerors, or be annihilated. The two former of these three alternatives were adopted in Peru, partly from natural causes, but partly also owing to the incessant exertions of the earlier Spanish viceroys, and of the "Defenders of the Indians;" and this result was achieved in spite of the oppression and cruelty of their subordinates. The Indians have continued to form the labouring class of Peru; amalgamation has taken place, to a very large extent, with Europeans; and the native race has thus been preserved from extinction.[195] In the English colonies, on the other hand, owing to the influx of settlers of the labouring class, the aborigines have either been exterminated, or, through a system of isolation, are rapidly and inevitably advancing on the melancholy road to final annihilation. But it was the intention of the Spanish system to do more for the aboriginal race than merely to preserve it from extinction. By adopting a system of tutelage, as regarded the Indians, the Spanish Government endeavoured to defend them, in legal matters, from the superior intelligence of a more civilized race; and Mr. Helps points out that it is hardly possible to carry legislation further, in favour of any people, than by considering them as minors in the eye of the law, in order to protect them from being imposed upon in their dealings with their conquerors.[196] The opposite plan, which has been adopted in some of the English colonies, of making native tribes equal to Europeans in the eye of the law, is a mere mockery, and cannot by any possibility exist in reality.[197]