Page:Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan.djvu/193

Rh the country. The latter was composed of men of intellect and energy, who threw off the yoke of the Romish Church, and, in the first enthusiasm of emancipated minds, tore away at once the black mantle of superstition, thrown, like a funeral pall, over the genius of the people. The Centralists wished to preserve the usages of the colonial system, and resisted every innovation and every attack, direct or indirect, upon the privileges of the Church, and their own prejudices or interests. The Liberals, ardent, and cherishing brilliant schemes of reform, aimed at an instantaneous change in popular feelings and customs, and considered every moment lost that did not establish some new theory or sweep away some old abuse. The Centralists forgot that civilization is a jealous divinity, which does not admit of partition, and cannot remain stationary. The Liberals forgot that civilization requires a harmony of intelligence, of customs, and of laws. The example of the United States and of their free institutions was held up by the Liberals; and the Centralists contended that, with their ignorant and heterogeneous population, scattered over a vast territory, without facilities of communication, it was a hallucination to take our country as a model. At the third session of Congress the parties came to an open rupture, and the deputies of San Salvador, always the most Liberal state in the confederacy, withdrew.

Flores, the vice-chief of the State of Guatimala, a Liberal, had made himself odious to the priests and friars by laying a contribution upon the convent at Quezaltenango; and while on a visit to that place the friars of the convent excited the populace against him as an enemy to religion. A mob gathered before his house, with cries of "Death to the heretic!" Flores fled to the church; but as he was entering the door a mob of women seized him, wrested a stick from his hands; beat him with it, tore off his cap, and dragged him by the hair. He escaped from these furies and ran up into the pulpit. The alarm-bell was sounded, and all the rabble of the town poured into the plaza. A few soldiers endeavoured to cover the entrance to the church, but were assailed with stones and clubs; and the mob, bearing down all opposition, forced its way into the church, making the roof ring with cries of "Death to the heretic!" Rushing toward the pulpit, some tried to unhinge it, others to scale it; others struck at the unhappy vice-chief with knives tied to the ends of long poles; while a young fiend, with one foot on the mouldings of the pulpit and the other elevated in the air, leaned over and seized him by the hair. The curate, who was in the pulpit with him, frightened at the tempest he had assisted to raise, held up the Holy of Holies, and begged the mob to spare him, promising that he should leave the city immediately. The unhappy Flores, on his