Gallipolis journal. [volume] (Gallipolis, Ohio) 1837-1919, 1853-06-23


tober, 1499, caught, from the quarter
deck of the Santa Maria, the twinkling
beams of taper from the shores of San
Salvador, all the territorial and political
rights of its simple inhabitants were ex-
tinguished forever. When on the follow
ing morning the keel of his vessel grated
upon the much-longed-for strand, it COM
pleted, with more than electric speed,
that terrible circuit which connected the
islands and the continent to the footstool
of the Spanish throne. As he landed
upon the virgin shore, its native inhabi-
tants, if they could have foreseen the
future, would have felt, if / may pre-
sumo thus to apply the words, that vir-
tue had gone out of it forever. With
some of them the process was sharp and
instantaneous; with others more gradu-
al but not less sure; with some even after
nearly four centuries it is still going on
but with all it was an irrevocable doom.
The wild and warlike-the indolent and
semi-civilized-the bloody Aztec-the
inoffensive Peruvian-the fierce Arau-
canian-all Jared alike; a foreign rule
and an iron yoke settled or is settling
down upon their necks forever. Ap-
plause.
Such was the law of nations of that
day, not enacted, however, by Spain
1t was in reality the old principle of the
right of the strongest, disguised by a
pretext; colossal iron falsehood gilded
over with the thin foil of seeming truth.
1t was the same principle which promp-
ted the eternal wars of the Greeks and
Romans. Aristotle asserts, without
qualification, that the Greeks had a per-
sonal right of war and conquest against
the barbarians; that is, all the rest of the
world; and the pupil of Aristotle pro-
claimed this doctrine at the head of the
Macedonian phalanx on the banks of the
Indus. The irruption of the barbarous
races into Europe during the centuries
that preceded and followed Christianity,
rested on as good principle-rather
better, the pretext only was varied; al
though the Gauls and Goths did not
probably trouble themselves much about
pretexts. They adopted rather the sim
pie philosophy of the robber chieftain of
the Scottish Highlands:
Pent in this fortress of the North,
Thinks thou we will not sally forth
To spoil the spoiler as We may,
And from the robber rend his prey?
When the Mahometan races rose to
power they claimed dominion over all
who disbelieved the Koran. Conversion
or determination was the alternative
which they offered to the world, and
which was announced in letters of fire
and blood from Spain to the Ganges.-
The States of Christian Europe did but
retort the principle and the practice,
when in five successive crusades, kept
up for more than three hundred years,
they poured desolation over the west Of
Asia, in order to rescue the sepulchre oi
the Prince of Peace from the possession
of unbelievers. Applause.
Such were the principles of the public
law and the practice under them, as they
existed when the great discoveries of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries TOOK
place. When the Portuguese began to
push their advantages far to the south
on the coast of Africa, in order to give
to those principles the highest sanction,
they procured of Pope Nicholas the
Fifth, in 1854, the grant of right Of
sovereignty over all the heather tribes,
nations, and countries discovered, or to
be discovered by them, from Africa tC
India, and the exclusive title thus con-
ferred was recognized by all the Other
nations of Christendom.
On the return of Columbus from his
first voyage, the King of Spain, not to
fall behind his neighbors in the strength
of his title, lost no time in obtaining from
Pope Alexander the Sixth a similar
grant of all the heather lands discovered
by Columbus, or which might hereafter
be discovered in the west. To preclude
as far as possible, all conflict with Por.
tugal, the famous line of demarcatio1
was projected from the north to thu
south, hundred leagues west of the
Azores, cutting the earth into two halves
like an apple, and, as far as the new dis
coveries were concerned, giving to tn,
Spaniards all west of the line, and con
frming all east of it to the Portuguese
in virtue of the grant already mentioned
of Pope Nicholas the Fifth.
Iregret that want of time viii not al
low me to dwell upon the curious historl
of this line of demarcation, for the bene
fit of all the States having boundary
controversies, and especially our siste
republics of Nicaragua and Costa Rica
1t is sufficient to say that it remained I
subject of dispute and collision for thre,
hundred and sixty-one years, and wa
finally settled at the Congress of Vienn;
in 1915.
The territorial extension of Portuga
and Spain which resulted from the dis
covery of America was followed by tn
most extraordinary effects upon tn,
commerce, the finances, and the polite
generally of those two countries, ant
through them of the world. The over
land trade to the East was abandoned
/ The whole of South America, and con
siderable part of North America, were
] in the course of the sixteenth century
settled by those Governments; who or
ganized in their transatlantic possession
! colonial system of the most rigid an