Page:Guatimala or the United Provinces of Central America in 1827-8.pdf/98

Rh their measures from fear of the excesses of the liberals. These with the Europeans, from a dislike to every change, and a feverish dread of innovation, steadily oppose whatever tends to lessen the influence of the Romish church, or to introduce a liberal system of commercial policy. The liberals on the other hand, abruptly freed from a thraldom which they had borne for ages, and in some of the provinces suddenly advanced to power and place, seize on every new thing with avidity, plunge into schemes of which they understand nothing, and in their zeal to overthrow all existing institutions, forget to separate the good from the bad, the wheat from the tares. The latter are as incautious as the former are fearful. The one holds wretched theories, but lessens the evil by mild and moderate practice. The other disgraces better principles, by a miserable exemplification of them. In politics the one is ultra republican, the other, ultra aristocratical. In religion the former inclines to superstition; the latter to scepticism. To foreigners both parties are courteous and obliging, and never suffer local prejudices to interfere with the rites of hospitality.

Into these two classes the white population may be pretty equally divided. Difference of sentiment and of character, both mental and moral, unite in making them determined enemies, and ce