The British Press; or, Morning Literary Advertiser.
London, England, 1822-10-12 00:00:00

NOW NRXICAV RNP!RE.

The conquest of Mexico by Carter comprises the
nem brilliart series of echieventents, by 'own,-
lain end his Mowers, that can be found in the
history of man. There is nothing in Upham's
Frame sere intensely captivating to the youthful
imagination, nor in all the works of the Author of
Moseley is there any thing more picturesquely ex-
hibiting Inman nature in the strange lights and .he-
dons of ages gone by, and returning is it were from
the dead, at once to awe nod elevate, surprise and
dazzle, the matures* intellect in our serener times—
than in the old matter•of-fact narrative of the land-
ing of this gallant chieftain on the shores of a
mighty region towards the Petting sun (unknown
to generations before him), with • handlul of ad-
venturers—fewer than five hundred—but every man
among them a champion, equal in prowess to a
thousand of the feeble but spirited natives:—his
cautious progress, step by step, securing every find
of ground as he advanced, after having burned his
ships to cut off any craven hope of retreat by way
of the sea, should his comrades be discouraged, or
disposed to mutiny and abandon the enterprise—an
enterprise thus rendered gloriously desperate, ron-
quest or death being the only alternatives left to
himself or them ; his gradual sssumption of more
arrogant pretensions them those of a friendly visit by
superior but beneficent brings from • far country,
to form an alliance with the children of the west ;
his inimitable subtlety, his romantic valour, his un-
wearied perseverance, his boundless hut noble am-
bition, and all the wiles and all the force of mind
arid nerve, with which he wormed and wheedled,
and blustered and fought, his way through innu-
merable obstructions, from the coast to the capital,
and into the palace of the Emperor, till all thus he
taw he had subdued, and consummated his work
by annexing, as a province to his mother country,
the realm of the brave but unfortunate Montezuma,
the last of a race of Princes who had themselves
been emigrants from the north iipo that region of
the suit, which they had conquered in like manner
by their arms from barbarians, and comparatively
civilized by their singular system of polity. We
find that we have achieved what cost our hero many
years to accomplish—the conquest of Mexico in "a
period of a mile." if the reader has had breath to
accompany us through its intricacies, he may de-
prod on it that he is prepared to follow the next
Cortez that shall arise through the next Mexico
that shall be discovered.

IVe have been speaking of this fearful warrior
and his labours as men ►peak in general of such
persons and such things, regardless of the justice
of the cause, in which he displayed an almost unpa-
ralleled combination of those dements that form
heroes, and those energies *lnch heroes exercise for
their own or their nation's aggrandizement, in de-
fiance of all that is righteous or sacred in public
communities, or dear and precious in private life.
Cortez, under this gorgeous panoply of martial
virtues, concealed a heart in which peifidy, avarice,
and cruelty, were the triple furies that governed nil
its impulses, and goaded all its passions to every
excess of indulgence that was compatible with his
devotions to
"The legion-lends of glary sod of gold.*

These, though he bore the cross as his standard, and
planted it wherever he sojourned—these were the
demons of his idolatry ; and a fanaticism more hair,
or more terrible, than that which was engendered by
his attachment to these, and his bigoited adherence
to a corrupt form of Chi istionity, which admitted,
stay even sanctioned, such abominations to be asso—
ciated with itself—we say a more base and terrible
fanaticism never cursed a human spirit, nor made
that spirit a curse to others, except in the case of
l'izarro, the ruffian imitator of Curies, who, in
ransacking Peru, exemplified with double enor-
mity all the atrocious (polities of the latter, midis-
guise(' by that pomp of chivalrous generosity, which
covered with suptifit ial glory the innate infamy of
all his exploits..

Though Spain thus rocquered America st little
expense to herself—except the expense of principle
and conscience, which people can very well afford
when they engage in iniquitous enterprises—she has
since paid the price of every drop of liniment blood
that she shed, and every foot of ground which she
seized unl.wfully there. Mexico and Peru, the
two wonders of the west, which (amidst au immense
continent inhabited by savages in the loosest ►tate of
social inte►coms.) presented beautiful but frail
examples of demi-civilization, and where men, essen-
tially the same throughout the world in intellect
and affections, appeared as dissimilar in manners
and habits, from their eastern spoilers, as the popu-
lation of the Moon, supposing it to be !tomtit, can
well be imagined differently modified by the pecu-
liarity of their circumstances from ourselves—Mex-
ico and Pelt' have been avenged on Spain for her
injustice to them, and their treasures, for which
they suffered her violence, have been the avengers
of their wrongs. These, through three centuries,
have corrupted, enfeebled, debased, and consumed
her strength. her virtue. her very progeny, both
abroad mid tit home. Though hitherto their soil
has grown nothing but slaves to serve these foreign
Lords, and their veins hart poured forth gold and
silver as freely us blood from mortal wounds, to
satiate their avarice. the time is come when those
slaves shall exhibit the new shape of man, hid under
the disguise which has been their inheritance fur
ages, and transmitted, like an old cloak, from sire
to son, till it is worn to rags and will hold no longer
together; nor can there be found in Old Spain a
Cortex or a Pixrr►o to make a new garb that will
fit the enfranchised form, or if it were made, that
could put it on.
This in itself is well, and it is impossible for one,
who, in sublunary concerns, loves freedom as hes-
sen's next best gift to life. not to rejoice at the com-
asencement of so novel and auspicious and gra in the
mutahilities of time, and the wale of man. But if
he, who could have foreseen the miseries to be en-
tailed, slot only on America but on Africa. aid by
intuits of retaliative reaction upon Europe itself, by
the success of tbeconst illustrious effort that Kitimat
and courage ever made together, the voyage of Co-
lumbus, would have been t►mpted, in the weakness
of humanity, to wish that the hope of the hero might
miscarry—we, who can infallibly prognosticate from
what has already appeared, a bun •and sanguinary
series of violence and sufferings, that will be ine►it.
ably consequent on the exertions of the colonists
end the natives, Arse to emancipate themselves from
the yoke of Spain, though that indeed is already

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