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.

_Penn_.--Ask thy heart whether ambition was not thy real motive and zeal
the pretence?

_Cortez_.--Ask thine whether thy zeal had