And the reason
for this most unnatural state of things was this--the Inca system of
government was founded on that most iniquitous and disastrous doctrine
that the individual bears the same relation to the State as a child
to its parents, that its life from the cradle to the grave must be
regulated for it by a power it is taught to regard as omniscient--a
power practically omnipresent and almighty. In such a state there could
be no individual will, no healthy play of passions, and consequently
no crime. What wonder that a system so unspeakably repugnant to a being
who feels that his will is a divinity working within him fell to pieces
at the first touch of foreign invasion, or that it left no vestige of
its pernicious existence on the continent it had ruled! For the whole
state was, so to speak, putrid even before dissolution, and when it
fell it mingled with the dust and was forgotten. Poland, before its
conquest by Russia, a country ill-governed and disorderly as the Banda
Oriental, did not mingle with dust like that when it fell--the
implacable despotism of the Czar was unable to crush its fierce spirit;
its _Will_ still survived to gild dreary oppression with hallowed
dreams, to make it clutch with a fearful joy the dagger concealed in
its bosom. But I had no need to go away from this Green Continent to
illustrate the truth of what I have said.
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