And how does it contrast with the scene now actually before us?  Look round upon these fields; they are verdant and beautiful, well cultivated, and at this moment loaded with the riches of the early harvest.  The hands which till them are those of the free owners of the soil, enjoying equal rights, and protected by law from oppression and tyranny.  Look to the thousand vessels in our sight, filling the harbor, or covering the neighboring sea.  They are the vehicles of a profitable commerce, carried on by men who know that the profits of their hardy enterprise, when they make them, are their own; and this commerce is encouraged and regulated by wise laws, and defended, when need be, by the valor and patriotism of the country.  Look to that fair city, the abode of so much diffused wealth, so much general happiness and comfort, so much personal independence, and so much general knowledge, and not undistinguished, I may be permitted to add, for hospitality and social refinement.  She fears no forced contributions, no siege or sacking from military leaders of rival factions.  The hundred temples in which her citizens worship God are in no danger of sacrilege.  The regular administration of the laws encounters no obstacle.  The long processions of children and youth, which you see this day, issuing by thousands from her free schools, prove the care and anxiety with which a popular government provides for the education and morals of the people.  Everywhere there is order; everywhere there is security.  Everywhere the law reaches to the highest and reaches to the lowest, to protect all in their rights, and to restrain all from wrong; and over all hovers liberty,—­that liberty for which our fathers fought and fell on this very spot, with her eye ever watchful, and her eagle wing ever wide outspread.

The colonies of Spain, from their origin to their end, were subject to the sovereign authority of the mother country.  Their government, as well as their commerce, was a strict home monopoly.  If we add to this the established usage of filling important posts in the administration of the colonies exclusively by natives of Old Spain, thus cutting off for ever all hopes of honorable preferment from every man born in the Western hemisphere, causes enough rise up before us at once to account fully for the subsequent history and character of these provinces.  The viceroys and provincial governors of Spain were never at home in their governments in America.  They did not feel that they were of the people whom they governed.  Their official character and employment have a good deal of resemblance to those of the proconsuls of Rome, in Asia, Sicily, and Gaul; but obviously no resemblance to those of Carver and Winthrop, and very little to those of the governors of Virginia after that Colony had established a popular House of Burgesses.