the Crown declined.
These conditions were repeated in the colonies of the two nations, with
some variations of form that were due to local influences in each of them.
The Spanish colonies relied entirely on the Crown and were, from the
outset, over-provided with royal officials from the grade of viceroy to
that of policeman, and even with clergy, all of whom were appointed by the
king's sole authority and were removable at his pleasure. These
settlements generally owed their existence to private enterprise, having
been founded by explorers and treasure-seekers, but in none of them did
the colonists enjoy any political rights or liberties, other than what it
pleased the sovereign to grant them.

They were ruled through a bureaucracy, of which were the members were
rarely efficient and usually corrupt, hence it followed that Spaniards
were bereft of any incentive to colonise, save one--their individual
aggrandisement. Their inherited habit of obedience reconciled them to the
absence of any share in the direction and control of the colony in which
their lot was thrown, but such a system of administration deprived them of
the possibility of acquiring experience in the management of public
affairs. Its effects were pernicious and far-reaching, for when the
colonies outgrew the bonds that linked them to Spain, their people,
ignorant of the meaning of true liberty, and untrained in self-government,
followed their instinct of blind submission to direction from above, and
fell an easy prey to demagogues. Deprived of participation in framing the
laws, the colonists employed their ingenuity in devising means to evade or
nullify those which they deemed obnoxious or contrary to their interests,
and constant practice soon perfected their perverted activities in this
direction, until obstruction and procrastination were erected into a
system, against which even royal decrees were powerless.

The results that followed were logical and inevitable. Laws devoid of
sufficient force to ensure their effective execution fail to afford the
relief or protection their enactment designs to provide, and ineffectual
laws are worse than no laws at all, for their defeat weakens the
government that enacts them and tends to bring all law into contempt.
Conditions of distance, the corruption of the colonial officials, the
conflict between local authorities, and the astutely organised opposition
of the colonists repeatedly thwarted the honest effor