Had those streams poured into deserts, by the
deserts they would soon have been absorbed, and we should have known
the Mahometan superstition only as we know twenty others of those forms
of faith produced by the East,--as something sudden, strange, and
short-lived. But it was fed by the riches which its votaries gained,
the reward of their piety, and the cement of their religious edifice.
The Normans, that most chivalrous of races, and, like all chivalrous
races, endowed with a keen love of gain, did not seize upon poor
countries, but upon the best lands they could take and hold,--the
beautiful Neustria, the opulent Sicily, and the fertile England, so
admirably situated to become the seat of empire. So, it will be found,
have all conquering, absorbing races proceeded, not even excluding the
Pilgrim Fathers, who, if they paid the Indians for their lands,
generally contrived to get good measure for small disbursements, and to
order things so that the lands purchased should be fat and fair in
saintly eyes.
Tried by the standard of conquest, the course of the American people
toward Mexico is the most natural in the world. Mexico possesses
immense wealth, and incalculable capabilities in the way of increasing
that wealth; and she is no more competent to defend herself against a
powerful neighbor than Sicily was to maintain her independence against
the Romans.
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