Look over the territory settled and conquered by her, and what do we see?  Columbus, sailing under Spain, names the first land he discovers San Salvador; the first settlement made in this country is St. Augustine; the second, Sante Fe.  Look down over the southern half of our continent and such names as Espirito Santo, Corpus Christi, San Diego, San Juan, San Jose, San Domingo attest the religious zeal of the conquerors.  They were missionaries of the Cross, robbing the people of their gold and paying them off with religion.

Steadfast in the faith and sturdy in her loyalty, Spain resisted all innovations with respect to her religious beliefs, and all insurrections against her government.  Her Alva and her Torquemada but illustrated how strong was her conservatism, while her Isabella and her Philip II show how grand and comprehensive and how persistent was her aggressiveness, under the idea of spreading and upholding the true faith.  She not only meant to hold all she had of wealth and power, but she aspired to universal dominion; already chief, she desired to be sole, and this in the interest and name of the Holy Church.

The Reformation did not disturb Spain; it was crushed out within twenty years.  The spirit of liberty that had been growing in England since Bosworth’s Field, and that was manifesting itself in Germany and the Netherlands, and that had begun to quiver even in France, did not dare stir itself in Spain.  Spain was united, or rather, was solidity itself, and this solidity was both its strength and its death.  England was not so united, and England went steadily onward and upward; but Spain’s unity destroyed her, because it practically destroyed individualism and presented the strange paradox of a strong nation of weak men.

As a machine Spain in the sixteenth century was a marvel of power; as an aggregation of thinking men, it was even then contemptible.  Ferdinand, Charles V and Philip II were able and illustrious rulers, and they appeared at a time when their several characters could tell on the immediate fortunes of Spain.  They were warriors, and the nation was entirely warlike.  During this period the Spaniard overran the earth, not that he might till the soil, but that he might rob the man who did.  With one hand he was raking in the gold and silver of Mexico and Peru; with the other confiscating the profits of the trade and manufactures of the Low Countries—­and all in the name of the Great God and Saints!

How was Spain overthrown?  The answer is a short one.  Spain, under Philip II staked her all upon a religious war against the awakening age.  She met the Reformation within her own borders and extinguished it; but thought had broken loose from its chains and was abroad in the earth.  England had turned Protestant, and Elizabeth was on the throne; Denmark, Norway and Sweden, indeed all countries except Spain and Italy had heard the echoes from Luther’s trumpet blast.  Italy furnished the religion, and Spain the powder, in this unequal fight between the Old and the New.  Spain was not merely the representative of the old, she was the old, and she armed her whole strength in its behalf.