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domestic, morality is judged, must vary for different countries under
widely different conditions, for exactly the same reasons that it must
vary for different periods of the world's history. We cannot expect the
refined virtues of a highly artificial civilization from frontiersmen
who for generations have been roughened and hardened by the same kind of
ferocious wilderness toil that once fell to the lot of their remote
barbarian ancestors.

The Kentuckian, from his clearing in the great forest, looked with bold
and greedy eyes at the Spanish possessions, much as Markman, Goth, and
Frank had once peered through their marshy woods at the Roman dominions.
He possessed the virtues proper to a young and vigorous race; he was
trammelled by few misgivings as to the rights of the men whose lands he
coveted; he felt that the future was for the stout-hearted, and not for
the weakling. He was continually hampered by the advancing civilization
of which he was the vanguard, and of which his own sous were destined to
form an important part. He rebelled against the restraints imposed by
his own people behind him exactly as he felt impelled to attack the
alien peoples in front of him. He did not care very much what form the
attack took. On the whole he preferred that it should be avowed war,
whether waged under the stars and stripes or under some flag new-raised
by himself and his fellow-adventurers of the border. In default of such
a struggle, he was ready to serve under alien banners, either those of
some nation at the moment hostile to Spain, or else those of some
insurgent Spanish leader. But he was also perfectly willing to obtain by
diplomacy what was denied by force of arms; and if the United States
could not or would not gain his ends for him in this manner, then he
wished to make use of his own power. He was eager to enter in and take
the land, even at the cost of becoming for the time being a more or less
nominal vassal of Spain; and he was ready to promise, in return for this
privilege of settlement, to form a barrier state against the further
encroachment of his fellows. When fettered by the checks imposed by the
Central Government, he not only threatened to revolt and establish an
independent government of his own, but even now and then darkly hinted
that he would put this government under the protection of the very
Spanish power at whose cost he always firmly intended to take his own
strides towards greatness. As a mat