eople had that was
intellectually most alert, inquisitive, and progressive; and, finally
(4), the policy of extermination, and, where not of extermination, of
cruel oppression, systematically pursued towards the aborigines of
America. Into the grounds on which the different counts of this
indictment rest it would be impossible now to enter. Were it desirable
so to do, time would not permit. Suffice it to say, the penalty had to
be paid to the uttermost farthing; and one large instalment fell due,
and was mercilessly exacted, during the year now drawing to its close.
Spanish domination in America ceased,--the drama ended as it was
entering on its fifth century,--and it can best be dismissed with the
solemn words of Abraham Lincoln, uttered more than thirty years ago,
when contemplating a similar expiation we were ourselves paying in blood
and grief for a not dissimilar violation of an everlasting law,--"Yet,
if God wills that this mighty scourge continue until all the wealth
piled by the bondsmen's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil
shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be
paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years
ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and
righteous altogether!'"

But not only is this year memorable as witnessing the downfall and
complete extirpation of that Spanish rule in America which began with
Columbus, but the result, when it at last came about, was marked by
incidents more curiously fitting and dramatic than it would have been
possible for a Shakspeare to have conceived. Columbus, as we all know,
stumbled, as it were, on America as he sailed west in search of
Asia,--Cipango he was looking for, and he found Cuba. It is equally well
known that he never discovered his mistake. When fourteen years later he
died, it was in the faith that, through him, Europe had by a westward
movement established itself in the archipelagoes of Asia. And now, at
last, four centuries afterward, the blow which did most to end the
American domination he established was struck in Asiatic waters; and,
through it and the descendants of another race, America seems on the
threshold of realizing the mistaken belief of Columbus, and by a
westward movement establishing the European in that very archipelago
Columbus failed to reach. The ways of Providence are certainly not less
singular than slow in movement.

But the year just endin