MEXICO. GUADALUPE.
[Illustration: The Rebozo worn by the Women of Mexico; and the Serape
worn by the Men.]
While we were away at the Real del Monte, the news had reached Mexico
that Puebla had capitulated, and that the rebel leader had fled. The
victory was celebrated in the capital with the most triumphal entries,
harangues, bull-fights, and illuminations done to order. If you had a
house in one of the principal streets, the police would make you
illuminate it, whether you liked or not. The newspapers loudly
proclaimed the triumph of the constitutional principle, and the
inauguration of a reign of law and order that was never to cease.
As for the newspapers, indeed, one looked in vain in them for any free
expression of public opinion. They were all either suppressed, or
converted into the merest mouthpieces of the government. The telegraph
was under the strictest surveillance, and no messages were allowed to
be sent which the government did not consider favourable to their
interests; a precaution which rather defeated itself, as the people
soon ceased to believe any public news at all. In all these mean little
shifts, which we in England consider as the special property of
despotic governments, the authorities of the Mexican Republic showed
themselves great proficients.
We were left, therefore, to form what idea we could of the real state
of Mexican affairs, from the private information received by our
friends. Just for once it may be worth while to give a few details, not
because the people engaged were specially interesting, but because the
affair may serve to give an idea of the condition of the country.
President Comonfort, not a bad sort of man, as it seemed, but not
“strong enough for the place,” and with an empty treasury, tried to
make a stand against the clergy and the army, who stood firm against
any attempt at reform—knowing, with a certain instinct, that, if any
real reform once began, their own unreasonable privileges would soon be
attacked. So the clergy and part of the army set up an anti-president,
one Haro; and he installed himself at Puebla, which is the second city
of the Republic, and there Comonfort besieged him. So far I have
already described the doings of the “reaccionarios.”
The newspapers gave wonderful accounts of attacks and repulses, and
reckoned the killed on both sides at 2,500. There were 10,000 regular
troops, and 10,000 irregulars (very irregular troops indeed); and these
were commanded by a complete regiment of officers, and _forty_
generals. This is reckoning both sides; but as, on pretty good
authority (Tejada’s statistical table), the troops in the Republic are
only reckoned at 12,000, no doubt the above numbers are much
exaggerated. As for the 2,500 killed, the fact is that the siege was a
mere farce; and, judging by what we heard at the time in Mexico, and
soon afterwards in Puebla itself, 25 was a much more correct estimate:
and some facetious people reduced it, by one more division, to two and
a half. The President had managed, by desperate efforts, to borrow some
money in Mexico, on the credit of the State, at sixty per cent.; and it
seems certain that it was this money, judiciously administered to some
of Haro’s generals, that brought about the flight of the
anti-president, and the capitulation of Puebla. The termination of the
affair, according to the newspapers, was, that the rebel army were
incorporated with the constitutional troops; that their officers—500 in
number—were reduced to the ranks for a term of years; that a hot
pursuit was made after the fugitive Haro; and that, as it was notorious
that the clergy had found the money for the rebellion, it was
considered suitable that they should pay the expenses of the other side
too; and an order was made on the church-estates of the district to
that effect. Of course, it was an understood thing that the officers
thus degraded would desert at the first opportunity, and thus the
Government would be rid of them. As for Haro, it is not probable that
they ever intended to catch him; and they were very glad when he
disguised himself in sailor’s clothes, and shipped himself off
somewhere. When the Mexicans first took to civil wars, the victorious
leader used to finish the contest by having his adversary shot. At the
time of our visit, this fashion had gone out; and the victor treated
the vanquished with great leniency, not unmindful of the time when he
might be in a like situation himself.
Whether the President ever got much of the forced contribution from the
clergy, I cannot say. At any rate, they have turned him out since; and
for a very poor government have substituted mere chaotic anarchy, as
Mr. Carlyle would call it. While the siege was going on, all the
commerce between Vera Cruz and the capital was interrupted, and, of
course, trade and manufacturing felt the effects severely. Nothing
shews the capabilities of the country more clearly than the fact that,
in spite of its distracted state and continual wars, its industrial
interests seem to be gaining ground steadily, though very slowly. The
evil of these ceaseless wars and revolutions is not that great battles
are here fought, cities destroyed, and men sacrificed by thousands.
Perhaps in no country in the world are “decisive victories,”
“sanguinary engagements,” “brilliant attacks,” and the like, got over
with less loss of life. Incredible as it may seem to any one who knows
how many civil wars and revolutions occur in the history of the country
for the last four or five years, I should not wonder if the number of
persons killed during that time in actual battle was less than the
number of those deliberately assassinated, or killed in private
quarrels.
Cheap as Mexican revolutions are in actual bloodshed, we must recollect
what they bring with them. Thousands of deserters prowling about the
country, robbing and murdering, and spreading everywhere the precious
lessons they have learnt in barracks. We know something in England of
the good moral influence that garrisons and recruiting sergeants carry
about with them; and can judge a little what must be the result of the
spreading of numbers of these fellows over a country where there is
nothing to restrain their excesses! As for the soldiers themselves, one
does not wonder at their deserting, for they are in great part pressed
men, carried off from their homes, and shut up in barracks till they
have been drilled, and are considered to be tamed; and moreover their
pay, as one may judge from the general state of the military finances,
is anything but regular. People who understand such matters, say that
the Mexicans make very good soldiers, and fight well and steadily when
well trained and well officered. They are able to march surprising
distances, day after day, to live cheerfully on the very minimum of
food, and to sleep anyhow. This we could judge for ourselves. One thing
there is, however, that they strongly object to, and that is to be
moved much beyond the range of their own climate. The men of the plains
are as susceptible as Europeans to the ill effects of the climate of
the tierra caliente; and the men of the hot lands cannot bear the cold
of the high plateaus.
Travellers in the United States make great fun of the profusion of
colonels and generals, and tell ludicrous stories on the subject. There
is also talk of the absurd number of officers in the Spanish-American
armies, but we should not, by any means, confound the two things. In
the United States it is merely a harmless exhibition of vanity, and an
amusing comment on their own high-minded abnegation of mere titles. In
Spanish America it indicates a very real and serious evil indeed.
Don Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, in his statistical chart for 1856, quoted
above, estimates the soldiers in the Republic at 12,000, and the
officers at 2,000, not counting those on half-pay. One officer to every
six men; and among them sixty-nine generals. These are not mere militia
heroes, walking about in fine uniforms, but have actual commissions
from some one of the many governments that have come and gone, and are
entitled to their pay, which they get or do not get, as may happen.
Only a fraction of them know anything whatever about the art of war.
They were political adventurers, friends or relatives of some one in
power, or simply speculators who bought their commissions as a sort of
illegitimate Government Annuities. The continual rebellions or
pronunciamientos have increased the number of officers still further.
Comonfort’s notion of degrading all the officers of the rebel army was
a new and bold experiment. A very common course had been, when a
pronunciamiento had been made anywhere against the then existing
government, and a revolutionary army had been raised, for an
amalgamation to take place between the two forces; intrigue and bribery
and mutual disinclination to fight bringing matters to this peaceful
kind of settlement. In this case, it was usual for the rebel officers
to retain their self-conferred dignities.
I think this body of soldierless officers is one of the most
troublesome political elements at work in the Republic. The political
agitators are mostly among them; and it is they, more than any other
class, who are continually stirring up factions and making
pronunciamientos (what a pleasant thing it is that we have never had to
make an English word for “pronunciamiento”). Several times, efforts
have been made to reduce the Army List to decent proportions, but a
fresh crop always springs up.
In the “lowest depth” of mismanagement to which Mexican military
affairs have sunk, the newspapers still triumphantly refer to countries
which surpass them in this respect, and, at the time of our arrival,
were citing the statistics of the Peruvian Republic, where there are a
general and twenty officers to every sixty soldiers, and as many naval
officers as seamen.
These officers are not subject to the civil administration at all,
whatever they may do. They have their _fuero_, their private charter,
and are only amenable to their own tribunals, just as the clergy are to
theirs. To the ill effects of the presence of such armies and such
officers in the country, we must add the continual interruptions to
commerce arising from the distracted state of the republic, and the
uncertain tenure by which every one holds his property, not to say his
life; and this, in its effect on the morale of the whole country, is
worse than the positive suffering they inflict. So much for soldiering,
for the present. We leave the President trying, with the aid of his
Congress, to organize the government, and set things straight
generally. This August assembly is selected from the people by
universal suffrage, in the most approved manner, and ought to be a very
important and useful body, but unfortunately can do nothing but talk
and issue decrees, which no one else cares about.
In consequence of the alarming increase of highway-robbery, steps are
taken to diminish the evil. It is made lawful to punish such offenders
on the spot, by Lynch law. This is all. You may do justice on him when
caught, but really you must catch him yourself. Sober citizens are even
regretting the days of Santa Ana (recollect, I speak now of 1856, and
they might regret him still more in 1860.) He was a great scoundrel, it
is true; but he sent down detachments of soldiery to where the robbers
practised their profession, and garotted them in pairs, till the roads
were as safe as ours are in England. A President who sells states and
pockets the money may have even that forgiven him in consideration of
roads kept free from robbers, and some attempt at an effectual police.
There is a lesson in this for Mexican rulers.
The Congress professed to be hard at work cleaning out the Augean
stable of laws, rescripts, and proclamations, and making a working
constitution. We went to see them one day, and heard talking going on,
but it all came to nothing. Of one thing we may be quite sure, that if
this unlucky country ever does get set straight, it will not be done by
a Mexican Congress sitting and cackling over it.
On our return from the Real, we spent two days at the house of an
English friend at Tisapán, at the edge of the great Pedrigal, or
lava-field, which lies south of the capital. It was across this
lava-field that a part of the American army marched in ’47, and
defeated a division of the Mexican forces encamped at Contrevas. On the
same day the American army attacked the Mexicans who held a strongly
fortified position at Churubusco, some four miles nearer Mexico, and
routed the main army there. They beat them again at Molino del Rey,
carried the hill of Chapultepec by storm, and then entered the city
without meeting with further resistance; though the Mexicans, after
they had formally yielded possession of the city, disgraced themselves
by assassinating stray Americans, stabbing them in the streets, and
lazoing them from the tops of the low mud houses in the suburbs.
An acquaintance of ours in Mexico met some American soldiers, with a
corporal, in the street close to his house, and asked them in.
Presently the corporal sent one of the men off into the next street to
execute some commission; but half an hour elapsed, and the man not
returning, the corporal went out to see what was the matter. He came
back presently, and remarked that some of those cursed Mexicans had
stabbed the man as he was turning the corner of the street, and left
him lying there. “So,” said the corporal, “I may as well finish his
brandy and water for him;” he did so accordingly, and the men went home
to their quarters.
The American soldiers were, as one may imagine, a rough lot. Only the
smaller part of them were born Americans, the rest were emigrants from
Europe; to judge by what we heard of them—both in the States and in
Mexico—the very refuse of all the scoundrels in the Republic; but they
were well officered, and rigid discipline was maintained. So
effectually were they kept in order, that the Mexicans confessed that
it was a smaller evil to have the enemy’s forces marching through the
country, than their own army.
An elaborate account of the American invasion is given in Mayer’s
‘Mexico.’ To those who do not care for details of military operations,
there are still points of interest in the history. That ten thousand
Americans should have been able to get through the mountain-passes, and
to reach the capital at all, is an astonishing thing; and after that,
their successes in the valley of Mexico follow as a matter of course.
They could never have crossed the mountains but for a combination of
circumstances.
The inhabitants generally displayed the most entire indifference;
possibly preferring to sell their provisions to the Americans, instead
of being robbed of them by their own countrymen. Add to this, that the
Mexican officers showed themselves grossly ignorant of the art of war;
and that the soldiers, though they do not seem to have been deficient
in courage, were badly drilled and insubordinate. One would not have
wondered at the army being in such a condition—-in a country that had
long been in a state of profound peace; but in Mexico a standing army
had been maintained for years, at a great expense, and continual civil
wars ought to have given people some ideas about soldiering. We may
judge, from the events of this war, that Mexico might be kept in good
order by a small number of American troops. The mere holding of the
country is not the greatest difficulty in the question of American
annexation.
One thing that struck our friends at Tisapán, among their experiences
of the war, was the number of dead bodies of women and children that
were found on the battle-fields. A crowd of women follow close in the
rear of a Mexican army; almost every soldier having some woman who
belongs to him, and who carries a heavy load of Indian corn and babies,
and cooks tortillas for her lord and master. The number of these poor
creatures who perished in the war was very great.
We spent much of our time at Tisapán in collecting plants, and
exploring the lava-field, and the cañada, or ravine, that leads up into
the mountains that skirt the valley of Mexico. I recollect one
interesting spot we came to in riding through the pine-forest on the
northern slope of the mountains, where the course of a torrent, now
dry, ran along a mere narrow trench in the hard porphyritic rock, some
ten or fifteen feet wide, until it had suddenly entered a bed of
gravel, where it had hollowed out a vast ravine, four hundred feet wide
and two hundred deep, the inlet of the water being, in proportion, as
small as the pipe that serves to fill a cistern.
Such places are common enough in the south of Europe, but seldom on so
grand a scale as one finds them in this country, where the floods come
down from the hills with astounding suddenness and violence. Mr. L. had
experience of this one day, when he had got inside his waterwheel, to
inspect its condition, the water being securely shut off, as he
thought. However, an aversada—one of these sudden freshets—came down,
quite without notice; and enough water got into the channel to set the
wheel going, so as to afford its proprietor a very curious and exciting
ride, after the manner of a squirrel in a revolving cage, until the
people succeeded in drawing off the water.
It was after our return from Tisapán that we paid a visit to Our Lady
of Guadalupe, rather an important personage in the history of Mexican
church-matters. The way lies past Santo Domingo, the church of the Holy
Office, and down a long street where live the purveyors of all things
for the muleteers. Here one may buy mats, ropes, pack-saddles—which the
arrieros delight to have ornamented with fanciful designs and
inscriptions, lazos, and many other things of the same kind. Passing
out through the city-gate, we ride along a straight causeway, which
extends to Guadalupe. A dull road enough in itself, but the
interminable strings of mules and donkeys, bringing in pig-skins full
of pulque, are worth seeing for once; and the Indians, trudging out and
in with their various commodities, are highly picturesque.
On a building at the side of the causeway we notice “Estación de
Méjico” (Mexico Station) painted in large letters. As far as we could
observe, this very suggestive sign-board is the whole plant of the
Railway Company at this end of the line. A range of hills ends abruptly
in the plain, at a place which the Indians called Tepeyacac, “end of
the hill” (literally “at the hill’s nose”). Our causeway leads to this
spot; and there, at the foot and up the slope of the hill, are built
the great cathedral and other churches and chapels, altogether a vast
and imposing collection of buildings; and round these a considerable
town has grown up, for this is the great place of pilgrimage in the
country.
The Spaniards had brought a miraculous picture with them, Nuestra
Señora de Remedios, which is still in the country, and many pilgrims
visit it; but Our Lady of Guadalupe is a native Mexican, and decidedly
holds the first rank in the veneration of the people.
In the great church there is a picture mounted in a gold frame of great
value. Its distance from the altar-rails, and the pane of glass which
covers it, prevent one’s seeing it very well. This was the more
unfortunate, as, according to my history, the picture is in itself
evidently of miraculous origin, for the best artists are agreed that no
human hand could imitate the drawing or the colour! It appears that the
Aztecs, long before the arrival of the Spaniards, had been in the habit
of worshipping—in this very place—a goddess, who was known as
_Teotenantzin_, “mother-god,” or _Tonantzin_, “our mother.” Ten years
after the Conquest, a certain converted Indian, Juan Diego (John James)
by name, was passing that way, and to him appeared the Virgin Mary. She
told him to go to the bishop, and tell him to build her a temple on the
place where she stood, giving him a lapful of flowers as a token. When
the flowers were poured out of the garment, in presence of the bishop,
the miraculous picture appeared underneath, painted on the apron
itself. The bishop accepted the miracle with great unction; the temple
was built, and the miraculous image duly installed in it. Its name of
“Santa Maria de Guadalupe,” was not, as one might imagine, taken from
the Madonna of that name in Spain (of course not!), but was
communicated by Our Lady herself to another converted Indian. She told
him that her title was to be _Santa Maria de Tequatlanopeuh_, “Saint
Mary of the rocky hill,” of which hard word the Spaniards made
“Guadalupe,”—just as they had turned Quauhnahuac into Cuernavaca, and
Quauhaxallan into Guadalajara, substituting the nearest word of Spanish
form for the unpronounceable Mexican names. This at least is the
ingenious explanation given by my author, the Bachelor Tanco, Professor
of the Aztec language, and of Astrology, in the University of Mexico,
in the year 1666. The bishop who authenticated the miracle was no less
a person than Fray Juan de Zumarraga, whose name is well known in
Mexican history, for it was he who collected together all the Aztec
picture-writings that he could find, “quite a mountain of them,” say
the chroniclers, and made a solemn bonfire of them in the great square
of Tlatelolco. The miracles worked by the Virgin of Guadalupe, and by
copies of it, are innumerable; and the faith which the lower orders of
Mexicans and the Indians have in it is boundless.
On the 12th of December, the Anniversary of the Apparition is kept, and
an amazing concourse of the faithful repair to the sanctuary. Heller, a
German traveller who was in Mexico in 1846, saw an Indian taken to the
church; he had broken his leg, which had not even been set, and he
simply expected Our Lady to cure him without any human intervention at
all. Unluckily, the author had no opportunity of seeing what became of
him. The great miracle of all was the deliverance of Mexico from the
great inundation of 1626, and the fact is established thus. The city
was under water, the inhabitants in despair. The picture was brought to
the Cathedral in a canoe, through the streets of Mexico; and between
one and two years afterwards the inundation subsided. _Ergo_, it was
the picture that saved the city!
For centuries a fierce rivalry existed between the Spanish Virgin,
called “de Remedios,” and Our Lady of Guadalupe; the Spaniards
supporting the first, and the native Mexicans the second. A note of
Humboldt’s illustrates this feeling perfectly. He relates that whenever
the country was suffering from drought, the Virjen do Remedios was
carried into Mexico in procession, to bring rain, till it came to be
said, quite as a proverb, _Hasta el agua nos debe venir de la
Gachupina_—“We must get even our water from that Spanish creature.” If
it happened that the Spanish Madonna produced no effect after a long
trial, the native Madonna was allowed to be brought solemnly in by the
Indians, and never failed in bringing the wished-for rain, which always
came sooner or later. It is remarkable that the Spanish party, who were
then all-powerful, should have allowed their own Madonna to be placed
at such a disadvantage, in not having the last innings. I need hardly
say that the shrine of Guadalupe is monstrously rich. The Chapter has
been known to lend such a thing as a million or two of dollars at a
time, though most of their property is invested on landed security.
They are allowed to have lotteries, and make something handsome out of
them; and they even sell medals and prints of their patroness, which
have great powers. You may have plenary indulgence in the hour of death
for sixpence or less. We drank of the water of the chalybeate spring,
bought sacred lottery-tickets, which turned out blanks, and tickets for
indulgences, which, I greatly fear, will not prove more valuable; and
so rode home along the dusty causeway to breakfast.
As means of learning what sort of books the poorer classes in Mexico
preferred, we overhauled with great diligence the book-stalls, of which
there are a few, especially under the arcades (Portales) near the great
square. The Mexican public have not much cheap literature to read; and
the scanty list of such popular works is half filled with Our Lady of
Guadalupe, and other miracle-books of the same kind. Father Ripalda’s
Catechism has a large circulation, and is apparently the one in general
use in the country. Zavala speaks of this catechism as containing the
maxims of blind obedience to king and pope; but my more modern edition
has scarcely anything to say about the Pope, and nothing at all about
the government. Of late years, indeed, the Pope has not counted for
much, politically, in Mexico; and on one occasion his Holiness found,
when he tried to interfere about church-benefices, that his authority
was rather nominal than real. On the whole, nothing in the Catechism
struck me so much as the multiplication-table, which, to my unspeakable
astonishment, turned up in the middle of the book; a table of fractions
followed; and then it began again with the Holy Trinity.
To continue our catalogue; there are the almanacks, which contain rules
for foretelling the weather by the moon’s quarters, but none of the
other fooleries which we find in those that circulate in England among
the less educated classes. It is curious to notice how the taste for
putting sonnets and other dreary poems at the beginnings and ends of
books has survived in these Spanish countries. What used to be known in
England as “a copy of verses” is still appreciated here, and almanacks,
newspapers, religious books, even programmes of plays and bull-fights,
are full of such dismal compositions. We ought to be thankful that the
fashion has long since gone out with us (except in the religions tract,
where it still survives). It is not merely apropos of sonnets, but of
thousands of other things, that in these countries one is brought, in a
manner, face to face with England as it used to be; and very trifling
matters become interesting when viewed in this light. The last item in
the list comprises translations, principally of French novels, those
being preferred in which the agony is “piled up” to the highest point.
German literature is represented by the “Sorrows of Werter.” Of course,
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is widely circulated here, as it is everywhere in
countries not given to the “particular vanity” attacked in it.
One need hardly say that both literature and education are at a very
low ebb in Mexico. Referring to Tejada again, I find that he reckons
that in the capital, out of a population of 185,000, there are 12,000
scholars at primary schools; but of course, as in other countries, a
large proportion of these children attend so irregularly that they can
hardly learn anything. For the country generally, he estimates one
child receiving instruction out of thirty-seven inhabitants, a very
significant piece of statistics. Efforts are being made, especially in
the capital, to raise the population out of this state. Mr. Christy
took much trouble in investigating the subject, with the assistance of
our friend Don José Miguel Cervantes, the head of the Ayuntamiento, or
Municipal Council. This gentleman, with a few others, has been doing
much up-hill work of this kind for years past, establishing schools,
and trying to make head against the opposition of the priests and the
indifference of the people, as yet with but small success.
It seems hard to be always attacking the Roman Catholic clergy, but of
one thing we cannot remain in doubt,—that their influence has had more
to do than anything else with the doleful ignorance which reigns
supreme in Mexico. For centuries they had the education of the country
in their hands, and even at this day they retain the greater share of
it. The training which the priests themselves receive will therefore
give one some idea of what they teach their scholars. Unluckily, their
course of instruction was stereotyped ages ago, when learned men
devoted themselves to writing huge books on divinity, casuistry, logic,
and metaphysics; concealing their ignorance of facts under an
affectation of wisdom and clouds of long words; demonstrating how many
millions of angels could dance on a needle’s point; writing treatises
“_de omni re scibili_,” and on a good many things unknowable also; and
teaching their admiring scholars the art of building up sham arguments
on any subject, whether they know anything about it or not. This is a
very vicious system of training for a man’s mind, the more especially
when it is supposed to set him up with a stock of superior knowledge;
and this is what the Roman Catholic clergy have been learning,
generation after generation, in Mexico and elsewhere. Of course, there
are plenty of exceptions, particularly among the higher clergy; but, so
far as I have been able to ascertain, education in clerical schools has
generally been of this kind. It is instinctive to talk a little, as one
occasionally finds an opportunity of doing, to some youth just out of
these colleges. I recollect speaking to a young man who had just left
the Seminario of Mexico, where he had been through a long course of
theology and philosophy. He was astonished to hear that bull-fighting
and colearing were not universally practised in Europe; and, when his
father began to question me about the Crimean war, the young
gentleman’s remarks showed that he had not the faintest idea where
England and France were, nor how far they were from one another.
I happened, not long ago, to visit a celebrated monastic college in
South Italy, where they educated, not ordinary mortals, but only young
men of noble birth; and here I took particular care in inspecting the
library, judging that, though the scholars need not learn all that was
there, yet that no department of knowledge would be taught there that
was not represented on the library-shelves. What I saw fully confirmed
all that I had previously seen and heard about the monastic learning of
the present day. There were to be seen many fine manuscripts, and
black-letter books, and curious old editions of great value, good store
of classics (mostly Latin, however), works of the Fathers by the
hundred-weight, and quartos and folios of canon-law, theology,
metaphysics, and such like, by the ton. But it seemed that, in the
estimation of the librarians, the world had stood still since the time
of Duns Scotus; for, of what we call positive knowledge, except a
little arithmetic and geometry, and a few very poor histories, I saw
nothing. It is easy to see how one result of the clerical monopoly of
education has therefore come about—that the intellectual standard is
very low in Mexico. The Holy Office, too, has had its word to say in
the matter. This institution had not much work to do in burning
Indians, who were anything but sceptical in their turn of mind, and,
indeed, were too much like Theodore Hook, and would believe “forty, if
you pleased.” They even went further, and were apt to believe not only
what the missionaries taught them, but to cherish the memory of their
old gods into the bargain. It was three centuries after the Conquest,
that Mr. Bullock got the goddess Teoyaomiqui dug up in Mexico; and the
old Indian remarked to him that it was true the Spaniards had given
them three very good new gods, but it was rather hard to take away all
their old ones. At any rate, the functions of the Inquisition were
mostly confined to working the _Index Expurgatorius_, and suppressing
knowledge generally, which they did with great industry until not long
ago.
Here, then, are two causes of Mexican ignorance, and a third may be
this; that Mexico was a colony to which the Spaniards generally came to
make their fortunes, with a view of returning to their own land; and
this state of things was unfavourable to the country as regards the
progress of knowledge, as well as in other things.