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It must be remembered also that Spain, in the years following her
brilliant conquests of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, lost
strength and vigor through the corruption at home induced by the
unearned wealth that flowed into the mother country from the colonies,
and by the draining away of her best blood. Nor did her sons ever
develop that economic spirit which is the permanent foundation of
all empire, but they let the wealth of the Indies flow through their
country, principally to London and Amsterdam, there to form in more
practical hands the basis of the British and Dutch colonial empires.
The priest and the soldier were supreme, so her best sons took up
either the cross or the sword to maintain her dominion in the distant
colonies, a movement which, long continued, spelled for her a form of
national suicide. The soldier expended his strength and generally laid
down his life on alien soil, leaving no fit successor of his own stock
to carry on the work according to his standards.


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