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338 But is Mexico ready for democracy? Does she not need to be ruled by a despot for awhile longer, until such a time as she shall have developed capacity for democracy? I repeat this absurd question only because it is so common. The only reasonable reply is that of Macaulay, that capacity for democracy can only increase with experience with the problems of democracy. Mexico is as ready for democracy as a country can be which has no democracy whatsoever. There is no chance of Mexico having complete democracy at this time. These things come only gradually, and there is no danger whatsoever of her suddenly getting more democracy than is good for her. Who will say that Mexico should not at once have just a little democracy, enough, say, to deliver her people from the mire of slavery and peonage?

Assuredly Mexico is behind us in the march of progress, behind us in the conquests of democracy. But, in considering her, be just and consider what the luck of history gave us in comparison to what it gave the Mexican. We were lucky enough not to have the rule of Spain imposed upon us for 300 years. We were lucky enough to escape the clutch of the Catholic church at our throats in our infancy. Finally, we were lucky enough not to be caught in our weakness at the end of a foreign war, caught by one of our own generals, who, in the guise of president of our republic, quietly and cunningly, with the cunning of a genius and the remorselessness of an assassin, built up a repressive machine such as no modern nation has ever been called upon to break. We were lucky enough to escape the reign of Porfirio Diaz.

Thus, whichever way we turn, we come finally back to the fact that the immediate cause of all the ills, the shortcomings, the vices of Mexico is the system of Diaz.