Page:Guatimala or the United Provinces of Central America in 1827-8.pdf/99

Rh their clashing opinions, feelings, and interests, have, as might naturally have been expected, involved the country in all the horrors of a civil war,

This confusion of elements gives to Guatimala a character of its own, differing considerably from that of the sister republics. Liberated from the yoke of Spain, not less by uncontrollable circumstances, than by the force of moral feeling; it achieved its independence without an effort, and silently exchanged the rule of a despotic monarch, for the factious struggles of opposing parties. Each has appealed to arms, excited the passions, and called out the energies of a dangerous ally in the coloured population. Happy will it be for the disputants on either side, if these dissensions shall have subsided, before this third party, powerful enough to extirpate both, wash out their differences in mingled blood!

Nor are such apprehensions altogether without foundation. The Mulatto, or mixed race, form in point of fact, the physical force of the nation. To a considerable degree of cunning, they unite an energy to which the simple Indian is altogether a stranger, are less subject to the restraints of a superstitious creed, and more abandoned to the grosser vices of drunkenness and revenge. That such a population, armed and disciplined, inflated with new ideas of liberty and citizenship, and at the same time shut out, both by colour and