of it may be?  Is it richly furnished within? the more it will tempt the hands of violence and of rapine to seize its wealth.  The world, William Penn, is all a land of robbers.  Any state or commonwealth erected therein must be well fenced and secured by good military institutions; or, the happier it is in all other respects, the greater will be its danger, the more speedy its destruction.  Perhaps the neighbouring English colonies may for a while protect yours; but that precarious security cannot always preserve you.  Your plan of government must be changed, or your colony will be lost.  What I have said is also applicable to Great Britain itself.  If an increase of its wealth be not accompanied with an increase of its force that wealth will become the prey of some of the neighbouring nations, in which the martial spirit is more prevalent than the commercial.  And whatever praise may be due to its civil institutions, if they are not guarded by a wise system of military policy, they will be found of no value, being unable to prevent their own dissolution.

Penn.—­These are suggestions of human wisdom.  The doctrines I held were inspired; they came from above.

Cortez.—­It is blasphemy to say that any folly could come from the Fountain of Wisdom.  Whatever is inconsistent with the great laws of Nature and with the necessary state of human society cannot possibly have been inspired by God.  Self-defence is as necessary to nations as to men.  And shall particulars have a right which nations have not?  True religion, William Penn, is the perfection of reason; fanaticism is the disgrace, the destruction of reason.

Penn.—­Though what thou sayest should be true, it does not come well from thy mouth.  A Papist talk of reason!  Go to the Inquisition and tell them of reason and the great laws of Nature.  They will broil thee, as thy soldiers broiled the unhappy Guatimozin.  Why dost thou turn pale?  Is it the name of the Inquisition, or the name of Guatimozin, that troubles and affrights thee?  O wretched man! who madest thyself a voluntary instrument to carry into a new-discovered world that hellish tribunal?  Tremble and shake when thou thinkest that every murder the Inquisitors have committed, every torture they have inflicted on the innocent Indians, is originally owing to thee.  Thou must answer to God for all their inhumanity, for all their injustice.  What wouldst thou give to part with the renown of thy conquests, and to have a conscience as pure and undisturbed as mine?

Cortez.—­I feel the force of thy words; they pierce me like daggers.  I can never, never be happy, while I retain any memory of the ills I have caused.  Yet I thought I did right.  I thought I laboured to advance the glory of God and propagate, in the remotest parts of the earth, His holy religion.  He will be merciful to well designing and pious error.  Thou also wilt have need of that gracious indulgence, though not, I own, so much as I.