Probably the fury
of besiegers has reduced it to its present dismantled state. What still
remains of it bears testimony of its former strength and may brave the
attack of time for centuries. You cannot view its ruins without calling to
mind the exploits of those fierce and hardy hunters, long the terror of the
Western world. While you admire their undaunted courage, you lament that it
was often stained with cruelty; while you extol their scrupulous justice to
each other, you will find a want of it towards the rest of mankind. Often
possessed of enormous wealth, often in extreme poverty, often triumphant on
the ocean and often forced to fly to the forests, their life was an ever-
changing scene of advance and retreat, of glory and disorder, of luxury and
famine. Spain treated them as outlaws and pirates, while other European
powers publicly disowned them. They, on the other hand, maintained that
injustice on the part of Spain first forced them to take up arms in self-
defence, and that, whilst they kept inviolable the laws which they had
framed for their own common benefit and protection, they had a right to
consider as foes those who treated them as outlaws.
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