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In a letter written to a friend, in 1846, he says, "The tyranny of our mother-country, today most acute, will have this result that within a period of time not very remote the Cubans will be compelled to take up arms to banish her." That British observers and most American observers should take the side of the Cubans is altogether natural. Writing in 1854, Mr.

It is certainly not much their interest to represent innovation as criminal or invidious; for they have introduced into the history of mankind a new mode of disaffection, and have given, I believe, the first example of a proscription published by a colony against the mother-country.

It was a grotesque idea to preserve nationality by insisting that even criminals must respect the Spanish birthright. History counts the fitful pulses of this bluest blood of Europe, and hesitates to declare that such emigrants misrepresented the mother-country.

It tended to assimilate the colonial manners to those of the mother-country, that the commercial intercourse was great, and that the merchants often went thither in their own ships. Indeed, almost every man of adequate fortune felt a yearning desire, and even judged it a filial duty, at least once in his life, to visit the home of his ancestors.

The colonel showed how commercialism was the poison at the heart of our national life; how we began as a simple, agricultural people, who had fled to these shores with the instinct, divinely implanted, of building a state such as the sun never shone upon before; how we had conquered the wilderness and the savage; how we had flung off, in our struggle with the mother-country, the trammels of tradition and precedent, and had settled down, a free nation, to the practice of the arts of peace; how the spirit of commercialism had stolen insidiously upon us, and the infernal impulse of competition had embroiled us in a perpetual warfare of interests, developing the worst passions of our nature, and teaching us to trick and betray and destroy one another in the strife for money, till now that impulse had exhausted itself, and we found competition gone and the whole economic problem in the hands of monopolies the Standard Oil Company, the Sugar Trust, the Rubber Trust, and what not.

Domingo, the Floridas and New Spain from the mother-country, the island of Cuba is connected only by similarity of religion, language and manners with the neighbouring countries, which, during ages, were subject to the same laws. Florida forms the last link in that long chain, the northern extremity of which reaches the basin of St.

Nova Scotia is, I firmly believe, the most generally and devotedly loyal of all our colonies: the attachment of its people to the mother-country is beautiful, and their partisanship in all questions between us and the States most zealous.

It was no sooner known in America, than the colonists rescinded their resolutions, and recommenced their mercantile intercourse with the mother-country. They presented their homespun clothes to the poor, and imported more largely than ever. The churches responded with thanksgivings, and public and private rejoicings knew no bounds.

Every misfortune and mishap of the mother-country fills him with mirth, and even with ecstasy. He hates the national customs, Russian history, and everything. If he has a justification, it is that he does not know what he is doing, and believes that his hatred of Russia is the grandest and most profitable kind of liberalism.

During this time our colonies, which were less disturbed by our commotions than the mother-country, naturally increased; it is probable that many, who were unhappy at home, took shelter in those remote regions, where, for the sake of inviting greater numbers, every one was allowed to think and live his own way.