Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 1.djvu/326

308 was not designed to obtain liberty, for they were already free; but it was excited and successfully pursued in order to prevent the burthensome and aggressive impositions of England which would have curtailed that freedom, and, reduced us to colonial dependence as well as royal or ministerial dictation. Mexico, on the contrary, had never been free. Spain regarded the country as a mine which was to be diligently wrought, and the masses of the people as acclimated serfs whose services were the legitimate perquisites of a court and aristocracy beyond the sea. There had been, among the kings and viceroys who controlled the destinies of New Spain, men who were swayed by just and amiable views of colonial government; but the majority considered Mexico as a speculation rather than an infant colony whose progressive destiny it was their duty to foster with all the care and wisdom of christian magistrates. The minor officials misruled and peculated, as we have related in our introductory sketch of the viceroyal government. They were all men of the hour, and, even the viceroys themselves, regarded their governments on the American continent as rewards for services in Europe, enabling them to secure fortunes with which they returned to the Castilian court, forgetful of the Indian miner and agriculturist from whose sweat their wealth was coined. The Spaniard never identified himself with Mexico. His home was on the other side of the Atlantic. Few of the best class formed permanent establishments in the viceroyalty; and all of them were too much interested in maintaining both the state of society and the castes which had been created by the conquerors, to spend a thought upon the amelioration of the people. We do not desire to blacken, by our commentary, the fame of a great nation like that of Spain; yet this dreary but true portrait of national selfishness has been so often verified by all the colonial historians of America, and especially by Pazo and Zavala, in their admirable historical sketches of Castilian misrule, that we deem it fair to introduce these palliations of Mexican misconduct since the revolution.

The people of New Spain were poor and uneducated,—the aristocracy was rich, supercilious, and almost equally illiterate. It was a society without a middle ground,—in which gold stood out in broad relief against rags. Was such a state of barbaric semicivilization entitled or fitted to emerge at once into republicanism?