Note * — Chapter II · THE PEARL OF ANDALUSIA

Instances of this lofty spirit are frequent in the history of the Spanish peoples. When, after their first uprising against the mother country, the people of Honduras (Central America) met in Congress to frame a Constitution, a priest rose and proposed that before anything else was done, every slave in the country should be set free. And the measure was carried unanimously and enthusiastically by the Congress, which must have included many slaveholders. It took the United States forty years to follow this example.