Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 1.djvu/467

Rh Sierra Gorda belonging to the States of Querétaro, San Luis, and Guanajuato. These, like the revolt in Yucatan, threatened a war of castes, but the energetic government found means to subdue the rebels, and to reduce their districts to order.

Thus, for more than two years, has the government of President Herrera maintained its respectability and authority in spite of a failing treasury, political factionists, and domestic rebellion. The attempted task of national reorganization has been honestly and firmly, if not successfully carried out. The army, that canker of the nation, has been nearly destroyed, and its idle officers and men discharged to earn their living by honest labor. A great change has passed over Mexico. Santa Anna lives abroad in almost compulsory exile. Canalizo and Paredes are dead. Bustamante, without political strength or party, retains a military command. The force in garrison does not amount to more, probably, than five or six thousand. The prestige of the army was blurred and blighted by the war. Nearly all the old political managers and intriguers are gradually passing from the stage, and, with the new men coming upon it, to whom the war has taught terrible but salutary lessons, we may hope that another era of civilization and progress is about to dawn upon this great country. This hope is founded on the establishment of order and official responsibility by a strong government which will neither degenerate into despotism nor become corrupt by the uninterrupted enjoyment of power. The true value of the representative system will thus become rapidly known to Mexico as she develops her resources, by the united, constitutional, and peaceful movement of her state and national machinery.

Among all the agitators of the country no one has been, by turns, so much courted and dreaded as Santa Anna. His political history, sketched in this volume, discloses many but not all the features of his private character. He possessed a wilful, observant, patient intellect, which had received very little culture; but constant intercourse with all classes of men, made him perfectly familiar with the strength and weaknesses of his countrymen. There was not a person of note in the Republic whose value he did not know, nor was there a venal politician with whose price he was unacquainted. Believing most men corrupt or corruptible, he was constantly busy in contriving expedients to control or win them. A soldier almost from his infancy, during turbulent times among semi-civilized troops,