Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 2.djvu/174

 of the Aztecs would be forever sung in song and story wherever brave deeds are remembered.

As has been elsewhere explained, the laurels of the conquest are not exclusively for Spanish brows. The superlative generalship and personal qualities of Cortes, their superior arms and knowledge of military tactics, and their indomitable courage, were the Spaniards contributions to the successful issue of the long campaign. In the ready hatred of its neighbours, and the quick desertion of its dependencies and allies, is read the proof of the inherent weakness of the Aztec Empire. All that these peoples possessed — their knowledge of the country, their labour, their treasure, their fighting men, and their thirst for vengeance — were placed at the disposition of Cortes, and thus the conquest was accomplished. Even admitting the most and the worst that has been said of the Spaniards' methods in carrying on this war of invasion, the result commands our applause in the name of humanity.

The Mexican civilisation, even granting that it had reached the high perfection claimed for it by some writers, was chaotic, stationary, and barren; it rested upon despotic power, and its many crimes were expiated in the blood of their perpetrators.

Whatever culture and refinement of living there were, centred in the capital and its immediate neighbourhood, the outlying provinces being peopled by aboriginal, not to say savage tribes, which justified their existence by the tribute of men and money they paid, without being sharers in the learning and luxury their labours sustained. "Humanum paucis vivit genus."

The arrival of the Spaniards in the midst of this chaos of tyranny and disloyalty shattered the loosely joined organisation, whose inferior character foredoomed it to destruction when brought into contact with a higher and more progressive type of civilisation.

The substitution of the Christian religion for the horrors of human sacrifices and the revolting cannibal feasts is, of itself, a sufficient justification for the overthrow of the Aztec Empire, whose bloody and degrading rites were of the very essence of its religious system. Upon the ruins of the old order, a new civilisation has been founded, from which a nation still in the process of formation has developed, in which Spanish and Indian blood are mingled, and which is advancing on the road of human progress to what destiny we know not, but in which the humblest Indian has his place living in a securer present, and moving towards a higher future, than any his own race could have shaped for him. Many of the best men in modern Mexico trace with pride their descent from Aztec kings and nobles. A uniform and rich language with its system of phonetic writing, the introduction of horses and beasts of burden, the use of iron and leather, improved systems of mining and agriculture which have brought under civilisation vast tracts of land, and increased the variety and quality of crops — these and countless other resources, unknown and unknowable to