But at the same time, while at Yakoutsk we find the best example of those happy consequences of this accommodating disposition of the Russians, it is here also, that in comparing the Russian conquest of the aboriginal inhabitants of the country with the conquests of other nations of which history affords us ample examples, we discover the more essential moral causes of the different results that the sequel of their several wars has produced.

The Spaniards, whose conquests form the greatest contrasts with those of the Russians, carried before them the cross, for which they opened a passage by the sword, and by worse means, carrying on exterminating war against all who submitted not blindly to their authority, and embraced not the faith which was to them a religion of blood with no other moral than that which recognised the right of the strong to commit every kind of violence against the weak.

The Russians, wiser, and better endowed with the true spirit of the religion they profess, have carried with them also the same emblem of peace and good will from Heaven towards man. But the means by which they have opened the passage for the symbol of their faith, and by which they have planted it in new soils, has been justice and equal rights, for the firm establishment of which their tolerant spirit has been the pledge.

Thus, while the Spaniards lighted the flames of war and hatred which are far from being extinguished even at this day, and afterwards converted to Christianity only in name the feeble remains of the people whom they nearly destroyed, the Russians have by their humanity subdued and reclaimed whole nations of far more barbarous races than any which the Spaniards encountered, and added them to the number of which their empire consists, and to whom their laws and their protection extend.

¶ 3:57 PM