University of Virginia Library

8044. SPAIN, Loss of colonies.—

I hail
your country as now likely to resume and surpass
its ancient splendor among nations. This
might perhaps have been better secured by a
just confidence in the self-sufficient strength
of the peninsula itself; everything without its
limits being its weakness, not its force.—
To Chevalier de Onis. Washington ed. vi, 342.
(M. April. 1814)