This was the tardy recognition granted to the discoverer by those to whom he had made the marvelous gift.  Recognition had been denied him in his life, except after years of persistent urging, second only to those years he wasted in his effort to arouse Spanish interest and enterprise.  Once he was removed from his West Indian governorship and returned to Spain in chains.  The titles and honors which had been promised him before, were denied after he had earned them.  He was a victim of foul ingratitude, and no American need permit sentiment to blind him for the sake of Columbus.

The splendid new world which Columbus gave to Spain, was the most marvelous addition of territory that has ever come into the possession of any nation upon earth.  It included the whole of South America, except Brazil, which was acquired by Portugal, and the small colonies known as British, Dutch and French Guiana.  It included the whole of Central America and Mexico.  It included the whole of what is now the United States west of the Mississippi river.  It included the whole of the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and the peninsula of Florida to the southern limit of Alabama and Georgia, and except for a few scattered islands, it included every foot of land in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean sea, all the coral rocks, as well as the greater islands of the West Indies and the Antilles.  To-day not a foot of all that enormous possession remains to Spain undisputed, except the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico.  These hundreds of thousands of square miles are inhabited by a free and peaceful people, most of them as republics, and the few exceptions under civilized and liberal colonial policies.  Spain’s hold on Cuba has vanished and Puerto Rico is slipping away.  Spain could not preserve the gifts of Columbus.

SPAINS colonial policies.

The logic of events and the progress of civilization have commanded that Spain should withdraw from her possessions in the western hemisphere.  Never has there been such a record of ferocity and barbarity in conquest, as that which blackens the pages of Spanish history in connection with Spain’s acquisition and subjection of her newly discovered territories.  Whether it was the peaceful Indians of the Antilles, the highly civilized Aztecs of Mexico, or the Incas of Peru, the policy pursued was always the same.  First, treacherous friendship, then robbery and massacre, then slavery, and finally extermination, was the unvarying programme.  And so, instead of winning favor and loyalty with their consequent happiness and prosperity from the native tribes, Spanish conquerors implanted in the possessors of the country an over-mastering and ineradicable hatred, which grew with association, until in colony after colony the bonds were burst by violence.

When Great Britain lost her American colonies by reason of her misgovernment and oppression of them, it was a lesson which her people never forgot.  From that day, the colonial policy of the British government was altered, and the spirit of liberality and generosity began to dominate.  To-day, every colony of Great Britain that enjoys representative government—­Canada, Australia, Cape Colony and many others, owes to the United States the liberty which Great Britain grants.